


The Hell of It

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Bedazzled (1967)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Praise Kink, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26534017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: George missed his chance to get into heaven, so what now? Does he want to corrupt Stanley Moon, or is it the other way around?
Relationships: Stanley Moon/George Spiggott
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. Hello Again

Well, that was it, then. God had won, as he inevitably always did. No point in playing silly buggers, no point in griping and moaning. The board was fixed and house rules were absolute. Nothing for George to do but get on with the business of tempting. He flitted over to America for a month, planting seeds that would bear rather nasty fruit. He had a hand in forming a counter-countercultural pop group that would be the bane of Super Bowls for decades to come. He sat at a campfire and spoke to a chap with a rather gnarled beard and jailhouse-crazy eyes about secret messages in pop music. He did some grassroots work for Nixon, though they kindly turned down the slogan he masterminded: “sit on Dick again.” He popped balloons, trod on toes, and made a general nuisance of himself.

And… 

And it felt hollow. He went through all the motions, but the spark just wasn’t there anymore. He hadn't realized how much the goal of re-admission had been propping him up until it was kicked out from beneath him, leaving him sprawling. George capped off his busman’s holiday with a discreet word in the ear of the Rolling Stones’ manager about employing a motorcycle gang as security for the free concert they’d been planning, and then it was back to London headquarters. 

George plodded along, cape pulled closed like a mac, gazing so squarely at his navel that Vanity’s waist-mirror could hardly have been more of an obstruction. Even the tiny sins of wrath coming off the pedestrians he inevitably bumped into brought him no joy. 

What was left? He did this job for eternity and then when the last star snuffed out, when entropy descended over the universe, what then? Spite had buoyed him up for a brief period, but left him feeling achingly empty.

In the back of his mind he noticed the Wimpy’s sign and his feet automatically turned towards it. He’d had the sudden urge to tell Stanley about when he’d started the advent of movable type and how it led to an entanglement with a fox and a dog and a passel of drunk Germans, only remembering as he shoved the door open and heard the tinkle of the bell that he’d made a vow to himself to stay far away from Stanley Moon and any further temptations on his part so as to show God how little his victory meant and how little he cared about the blighter. But nevermind, there was Stanley glancing anxiously up from the grill, face lighting up almost immediately as if he’d anticipated George long before he’d come in.

“George!” he said, “it’s been ages! Come on, sit down!” he gestured with his turner.

Oh well, already too late to leave with decorum. George doffed his cape and seated himself near the grill. And there was the coveted Margaret, smiling benignly as she handed him a menu. George wondered if Stanley had made any progress on his own RE: that direction, and then quickly decided he didn’t care. 

“‘Ere, George, this one’s on the house.” Stanley dumped a Wimpy burger so well done it should have been interred in an urn and blackened chips on a plate. It was quite the infernal meal. He’d even managed to scorch the milkshake, somehow. George was impressed, despite himself.

Stanly was smiling quite warmly at him, watching him eat. Behind his dark glasses, George looked everywhere but the cook. Smug little git. Who did he think he was, gloating over the devil? Worse than that Daniel Webster chap. 

“Where’ve you been?” Stanley asked when he’d choked down a respectable amount of food. “I worried about you, you know. I went by the club and Envy told me you hadn’t got in. I'm so sorry, George.”

Ah, just like Envy to gossip about him. That bitch. 

“It’s fine,” George lied, doffing his glasses at last. “Not like I'm not used to Him keeping His promises, after all.” he searched Stanley’s face for any scrap of irony, a single mote of insincerity. None to be seen.

The cook bit his lip as he looked over George. “So you’re not...sore about what happened then?”

“Why would I be?” came the flat reply.

“It’s just I've gotten very attached to my soul, and I'd like it to remain where it is now. Doesn’t mean we can’t still talk and catch up on things.”

“Of course not.” George gave a smile as blank as a sheet of paper. He had every intention of never returning to this establishment the minute he left his seat, but then Stanley said something as he pressed a beef patty to the hot grill, making it sputter and steam, just tossed off the statement bluntly as he pleased with no thought or nuance given:

“It’s just I feel quite sad for you, is all.”

George choked off a short laugh, not sure if he was more insulted or amused.

“Sad for me? You, Stanley Moon?” 

“Yeah.” Stanley gave him a timid little smile. He was quite precious, in his own little twerpy way. “I get the feeling you don’t get to talk to many people. You know, just  _ talk  _ like we have been. And I like it, the way you explain things to me. If you ever want to come to Wimpy’s, you know, in-between jobs, I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

George stared at him for a moment. 

“...thank you,” he said after a long pause. Somehow his hands found his glasses again, he left money on the table (forgetting that he was going to pay with an overly large bill that would have taken half an hour to sort out the change) and left Wimpy’s once more, Stanley’s cheery “tara!” at his back. His food sat like concrete, making for a welcome distraction.

Like a stopped clock, Stanley had struck exactly the right time this once: George had no one, absolutely none of his sins or conquests, that he had talked to so at length about...well, anything. He’d been rather heady in the face of his then-certain victory and felt a little slack, in this one instance, would be all right.

And that had been his downfall, George reflected as his feet steered him automatically back to the club. He’d let Stanley get too familiar, too close. Used his patheticness like a Trojan horse, he’d snuck past George’s defenses and then…

George stopped at the entrance of the club. That couldn’t be right. Stanley Moon: cold, calculating manipulator? Not likely. He’d just lucked into things, as God so often willed it. Choosing one of his penultimate souls to be George’s downfall? Oh yes, very much in the ineffable one’s wheelwright.

He spent the better part of the afternoon drinking and drawing obscene things on Sloth’s face. He was pleasantly sozzled when he heard the door open. Funny, he thought, funny, he wasn’t expecting anyone until past eight.

And there was Stanley Moon, hovering uncertainly on the steps, holding George’s cape like an exotic bird he knew was too expensive to let go.

“Hi George,” he said softly, “erm, you left this at Wimpy’s.”

George suppressed a belch. “Grand. Well, just deposit it on that stool there and you can go.” he wracked his brain for a reason he hadn’t grabbed the cape on his way out the door. Had he left it, subconsciously digging for a reason to go back to Wimpy’s?

Stanley neither set the cape down, nor did he go. He blushed slightly.

“I just want to know if you’re really not upset,” he stammered, “really, truly. ‘Cause I don’t want you to think I did it just to spite you.”

George tittered, which segued into a hiccup. “Oh no, innocent as a newborn babe, you are. No Stanley, I don’t think you capable of any level of subterfuge whatsoever.”

Stanley looked like he couldn’t decide whether the statement was an insult or not. Ah, he was learning. Time was, he would’ve just accepted the remark without thought. More of George’s malign influence, he thought as he topped off his glass. Old Stanners would be biting Eden's fruit by now.

“It’s just that—”

“How are you getting on with Margaret, Stanley?” George bulldozed over him. “When should I expect wedding invitations?”

Stanley let the corners of his mouth tick up for a microsecond, a smile so fleeting George wasn’t entirely sure it had happened at all. “Margaret’s alright. I’m taking it a day at a time. We were just talking music the other day.”

“Really? Another five years of that and she might let you touch her hand.” George took a swig. “Two-second caress, over gloves. I hear they call that maneuver 1/64th base.”

Stanley squinted, his brain chewing on the statement. “...you  _ are  _ unhappy with me.”

“Oh no, Stanley, I'm over the moon for you.” George dribbled the last dregs of the bottle into his glass. “Really. If I've spent a considerable chunk of my powers just to get you a millimeter closer to Margaret Spencer, well then, consider my work done.”

Stanley’s face fell. “‘Ere, let’s not talk about Margaret. I want to hear what you’ve been up to.”

George gave him an unsteady look. “The usual. Fire-brimstone-mayhem. Bog-standard damnation.”

“Oh.” Stanley had come off the stairs, now he gingerly draped George’s cape over one of his shoulders (much to George’s bemusement) and seated himself at the bar. “Did you meet any interesting people?”

George looked at him quite piercingly. “Not really. Stanley, don’t you think a saved soul such as yourself shouldn’t be seen in a den of iniquity like this?”

Stanley took time to process that statement. “I’m not here to sin, I'm just here to see after you, see if you’re alright. Anyway, friendship ain’t a sin, is it?”

George guffawed so suddenly he nearly slid off his stool. “That’s what you call this, then? Friendship?”

“Yeah. You stopped me from...well, offing myself.” Stanley looked down shyly, rolling his shoulders. “You did your best to cheer me up when you didn’t have to, just figured I should do the same.”

George stared at him for an uncomfortable amount of time. “Well,” he said suddenly, “consider myself cheered, then.” He turned back to his drink, away from Stanley and his quietly wounded gaze. “Give the door a little nudge on your way out, there’s a lad.”

He did not hear Stanley leave. Instead he heard very rhythmic breathing as if Stanley were psyching himself up for something. Then—

“I’m off Thursday next,” Stanley blurted “erm, in case you’re free. Or you wouldn’t mind company. Is all.” 

George said “I'll be at the zoo—” without thinking, choking off the words just a second too late.

Stanley looked like he’d gotten a stay of execution. “Might see you there, then? Cheers, George.”

He did not nudge the door on his way out, leaving it to drift open after his departure so that the call of the nextdoor sex-shop’s proprietor drifted down the stairs.

George closed his eyes tightly and made himself un-drunk. It was a very tedious and painful process, much like tweezing one’s brow, but in a few moment’s time he stood steady again.

Had he just made a date with Stanley Moon, instrument of his disappointment, the one mortal he swore he would not meet again for love nor money? Well, the obvious thing to do would to be to stand Stanley up that day, be all conciliatory smiles and handshakes when he inevitably turned up at the club like a kicked puppy,  _ oh sorry old boy, got busy and time just slipped by me. Next time eh? _ And then, and then, to accordion that one disappointment out to a calendar of broken promises, of simply not being there when he said he would, until Stanley just stopped showing up and faded into the background.

George found himself at the zoo entrance at noon sharp, cursing his inability to let things go, cursing the various compulsions the creator had infected him with, cursing Stanley’s smiling face most of all, its open and unbridled joy at seeing him again.


	2. A zed and two noughts

“One and a half, please,” George said to the ticket booth, shoving down on Stanley’s shoulder so that he seemed even shorter in relativity.

“What’s the point of that? I've got money enough,” Stanley complained after they’d passed the booth.

“I can’t win with you, can I?” George complained, sidling through the turnstile so it didn’t click. “You went after me when you had to pay for the Frobisher and Gleason lolly, I thought you’d jump at the chance to be treated. Anyway, if can do ill, I must. I’ve told you it’s compulsive.”

“So you really can’t leave off, just for one second?” Stanley strolled along, hands in his pockets, face open with curiosity. This was one of the traits George so enjoyed in humanity, hunger for knowledge no matter the baggage that came with it. You could paint “do not open—tiger” on a door, festoon it with bloodstains, and still the next gent would stick his head out the door without a second’s thought.

“If I do, I get all out of sorts. Have some pity, Stanley. Would you say to a stutterer ‘just clear your throat and be done with it?’”

“Never thought of it that way.” Stanley watched as George distracted a harried young nanny just long enough for her charge to lob a toffee apple into the hippo enclosure, promising an emergency vet visit and fines on top of fines. “Anyway,” he continued, “you ever thought of...doing bad in a good way?”

“Like what?” George raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Like, dunno, tempting a murderer to go after another murderer, tempting a banker to blow the whistle on his corrupt boss, that sort of thing?”

“I do go for those on occasion, they’re just not as filling. It’s all a rather complex system, really.” George stopped to show the red interior of his cape to a wildebeest, who charged the fence and scattered a gaggle of Flemish tourists.

“Well, what about the big sins, then? I’ve never seen you do one of those.”

George gave him a look of patience. “Those sins take care of themselves. Know all that business in Vietnam?”

“All that awful fighting? That was you?”

George got a little incensed at how shocked Stanley sounded. “In a way yes. All I had to do was indenture a sense of national  _ pride  _ in a certain country, inspire  _ wrath  _ against communists in whatever form they may take, nurture  _ avarice  _ for foreign territory, and there you go. Recipe for a tidy little war. It works to think holistically, in this job.”

“Yes but I think there’s a difference between holistic and arsehole-istic.”

George smothered a sudden chuckle. “You’re growing a bit of a wit, Stanley. Who knows, you might wind up your generation’s Oscar Wilde.”

“And wind up in the dock? No thank you. I’ll just stay a free dimwit, if it’s all the same.”

“Your choice Stanley.” George drew him up by the shoulders to a lion exhibit. “Here, look at them. Mighty Barbary lions. Hunt in pairs, and other assorted fruits.”

Stanley rolled his eyes at the pun. “Was he one of yours, Oscar Wilde?”

“Yes, in fact we had some very fascinating conversations on the nature of sin. He based a character off me, you know.” George struck a pose designed to show him in a very arch light.

Stanley wasn’t looking. “Oh yeah, who? That bloke Earnest?” He absently dug at a bogey.

George sighed through his teeth. “No.” He steered Stanley over to a cage where one lone rhesus monkey practiced an endless cycle of self-abuse. “Anyway, quite a devastating loss to the world of wit, that one. I think the collective IQ of Britain went down by a few degrees.”

“Well then, why tempt him to go sin that way? Could’ve just let him be into ladies.”

George stopped in his tracks, making Stanley stumble.

“Stanley,” he asked quietly, “do you, in your heart of hearts, believe I tempted Oscar Wilde into turning homosexual?”

“Well, yeah. Homosexuality is a sin. Isn’t it?” Stanley looked up at him for an answer.

George gave him an appraising look. “It it?” he asked loftily, then turned away, leaving Stanley to ponder in his wake.

“It’s just I've always been told—”

“By whom? By the church? Those lovely people who censured Galileo because they weren’t ready to believe the earth goes round the sun? The people behind the inquisition, the crusades, and those starchy collars that chafe you raw under the chin?  _ When have they ever been wrong? _ ” George said mockingly.

Stanley looked slightly hurt. “Well, I suppose not. It’s just—”

“What, Stanley? Blind me with your acumen.’

“—it’s hard to tell when you’re putting me on. You said you’re a liar.”

“I also said not to believe that statement, remember?”

“You wouldn’t—you wouldn’t try to trick me into sinning, just to get your own back?”

George laughed humorlessly. “And what, pray tell, would I be tempting you into doing just now?”

Stanley, averting his eyes, blushed and shrugged. 

George slung an arm over his shoulders and crowded him closer to the monkey cage. The primate gave them an evil look as it continued with its onanism. “Look at that monkey, Stanley. Lust is a sin. But do you think he has any notion of what the nature of sin is? No, not at all.”

Stanley grimaced at the sight. “So what then, does he go to a special animal hell?”

“No. To be honest, God’s never really bothered with animal souls. They basically get rinsed and reused. Once in a while some joker will swap them round, put a tiger in something small. That’s how we got the chihuahua. But for the most part it’s a self-sustaining system.”

“What about your mass extinctions, then? What happened to the dinosaurs?”

“They got turned into crude oil, after a fashion. They weren’t happy about it, believe you me. Ever had the ghost of a 50 tonne herbivore after you?”

A sudden light went on behind Stanley’s eyes. “Hang on, you’re saying smog and all that—”

George nodded. “Exactly. Stupid things are blundering into the stratosphere, looking for a place to graze, ripping all sorts of holes in the ozone layer. Wasn’t too much of a problem until you lot started burning them for fuel. That’s desecration of the grave, that is.”

“Blimey.” Stanley blinked. “I wonder if anyone’s told the scientists about this.”

“What, and be chucked in the looney bin?’ George snapped his fingers. A zookeeper’s belt loop popped stitches, his keyring falling into the baboon enclosure. “Anyway, the only solution would be to stop burning them, and you’d never get that to happen.”

“Well what about an exorcism?”

“What a cracking idea. What denomination do you think the Suchomimus is, Anglican?”

Stanley deflated as his idea was punctured. “Well, you don’t have to rub it in.”

“I’m not.” George bit back a laugh. “I’d just hope they’d televise it, is all. Fifty priests leveling scripture at the sky? Haven’t seen anything that side-splitting since the Flagellants.”

They lunched at the zoo’s cafe, George making such a muddle of the change that he actually got 50p back on top of his own money. Stanley watched him with a resigned look.

“So that’s it, then. You’re stuck in this job for all eternity.” He really did sound sorry for it all, and for a moment George could unclench from the resentment that he’d been carrying.

“Afraid so, Stanley.”

“That’s just about as bad as being stuck as a nun.”

“I dunno that most nuns would agree with you, Stanley.”

“I mean when you ain’t used to being a nun. What sort of person would you be if you weren’t being compelled to do all sorts of evil, then?”

“Not a person at all. An angel.”

“So you’d just mill about in heaven all day, playing on a harp, that sort of thing?” Stanley divided his bacon butty and took a bite of the left half.

“Not really. Right around dawn, we’d have to turn out and praise Him. That lasts until about noon, when we proclaim His holiness. That stretches out til about dinnertime, when we feast on His magnanimity. Not a second’s rest in heaven.”

Stanley chewed, thinking. “That sounds boring. You sure you’re really suited for that life—erm, afterlife?”

George rolled coins on his knuckles. “Truth be told, no. It’s more the rejection than anything else. When He threw me out of heaven, He practically left a boot-print on my backside. That’s all I get after epochs immeasurable of pure, sainted worship? Not so much as a card on my birthday? His son gets two whole holidays dedicated to him, I can't get so much as a Satan's eve?”

“Well what about satanists?”

“What about them?” George snapped his fingers, sending a waiter down as he tripped over his own shoelaces and spilled water on the Flemish tourists.

“Don’t they worship you?”

“No, satanists are more of what you call ‘anti-Christians.’ They think doing things in reverse of Christianity is what I want. Comes off as more of a rebellious phase than a religious movement. They don’t even properly worship my effigy. That horned bloke you see on their pamphlets? Nice little chap called Baphomet. Id est, not me.”

“Baphomet? Sounds like something you’d find in the lav.”

At five, business at the zoo was wrapped up rather neatly. Stanley lingered at the zoo exit, shifting weight from one foot to the other.

“Was a good day, wasn’t it George?”

And that was when George realized being in Stanley’s presence made him forget himself, because it all came rushing back in that very second and he clicked off like a light.

“Well,” he said dismissively, giving a little wave, “don’t get too used to it. I’m trying to double my temptation quota by the next quarter.”

Stanley’s smile wasn’t even dinged. “I know. And it’s good to see you whenever I see you.”

George found him very shakable at that moment. If he screamed in Stanley’s face I AM THE DEVIL, I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THE SORT OF PERSON YOU LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING, would Stanley get the hint?

“Right,” he said tightly.

Stanley seemed on the verge of saying something else, waiting for a cue from George, but the cue never came. George stared bloodlessly as Stanley walked away, twiddling a corner of his cape. On his way home he sent a bolt of diabolic inspiration to a restauranteur for a new dish that would utilize bog butter as an ingredient, sending a wave of people to the hospital with digestive ailments that hadn’t been seen since the bronze age. Then he popped by the BBC for a quick tempt, putting up the very convincing platform that no one would want to watch a mere comedy programme ten years from now, the tapes were better wiped and repurposed for other shows. That business done, he swept into the club and stared at the murky bottom of a liquor glass until dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will 5ever be salty at the BBC tape wiping situation. As someone who has come to the Cook&Moore comedy party relatively late, I'm fucking incensed at all the nonsense I will never get to see. It just kills me how *they offered to buy them new tapes and the BBC said no.* Quite a tragedy.
> 
> Anywho, on my many rewatches of this movie while preparing this fic, it really jumped out to me how much the Devil is like a school bully trying to appease and appeal to a bigger bully (god). He wants friendship and recognizes it in Stanley, but is prevented from ultimately pursuing it by the persona he's constructed. That's the tragedy of the story for me, and it's on that echoes the real life Cook/Moore relationship. Peter Cook strikes me as a guy who never really learned how to...just be. He definitely had a co-dependent relationship with Dudley Moore, and referred back to the years they worked together as the happiest of his life, even as he slagged him off in the press. A man of many contradictions, not unlike George Spiggott. Eerily prescient and autobiographical, this movie. Part of the reason I like it so much.


	3. Breakfast at Stanley's

George lounged between a television aerial and a chimney, peering down through a single, grimy window. He snapped his fingers.

Stanley Moon was fiddling with the plumbing under his sink. He rose suddenly to get a wrench and banged his head on the sink corner, giving out a white-hot twinge of wrath.

George smiled humorlessly.

He’d gone weeks without seeing Stanley...face to face. However he had made a habit of looking in on him in odd moments, spying on him, satiating the urge to see him without indulging in it. A bit like quitting smoking by sucking on a moist tobacco leaf.

He snapped. The wrench Stanley was using broke in his hand, leaving a steady stream of water under the sink. Stanley scrambled to turn the water off at the wall.

It was regrettably petty, visiting such misfortunes on Stanley, especially since he hadn’t done anything wrong per se. But really, what was George left with? He couldn’t very well punish God, could he? And tempting the population of the world on the whole did not have the visceral, immediate satisfaction of watching Stanley Moon fumble blindly for a towel.

Stanley was peering down into the drain. George waited until just a moment after he looked away before snapping his fingers. Backed-up water came fountaining from the pipe in an unholy slurry. Stanley covered his mouth and faced away from the mess, shoulders shaking.

Besides, why should Stanley Moon of all people be spared from his wrath? George watched him turn and fumble for something, wetting it in the sink. Miserable little Moon, with his miserable little life, too poor in money and sense to call a plumber. What was he doing with that smile on his face?

With the ease that came from years of writing Wimpy Burger menus in reverse on the glass storefront, Stanley inked  _ why don’t you just come in, George? _ on his window in soap.

George fumbled mid-snap, ducking down behind a gable. He weighed the embarrassment of fleeing quietly into the night against the embarrassment of facing Stanley and admitting yes, he had been exercising his pathetic little vices...and realized his stomach was pinching. He peered up over the roof again to find his quarry had crossed into the mean little space that qualified as a kitchen. He watched Stanley toss a lump of butter into a pan, watched it go all soft and golden at the sides. He carefully picked his way down from the roof.

“How’d you know it was me?’ he asked, hooking his cape over the back of a chair.

“Oh, I had a feeling the whole time. Had that George Spiggott flare, you might say.” Stanley whistled to himself, rolling the butter in the pan. Beside him he had eggs, cheese, and bread. 

“Should’ve thought you’d be raging at me then.” George picked at the card table Stanley had erected in what would be charitable to call the dining area. It was covered with a synthetic leather that peeled in ugly patches.

“No; well, knowing there’s someone behind it all does take the bite out of things. Especially since it's you.” Stanley shot him a wink.

George focused on unscrewing the salt shaker just enough that it would topple open at the tenth shake. He actually found the concept of a Stanley Moon that was completely misfortune-proof quite unsettling. The last thing he needed was another Job. “Right, well, sorry about that. Nothing—”

“—personal,” Stanley finished in unison with him. “But see, it’s at least a  _ little  _ personal. God may not care enough about me individually to grace me with a miracle, but you’ll pop by just to see me suffer a bit.” he cracked an egg into the butter, where it sizzled in a manner most temptatious. 

“Only you, Stanley, would find that touching in any capacity.”

“Yeah, see? There you go. ‘Only me.’ I'm the only one who’s gotten to know you like this.”

“And just  _ what  _ are you implying?” George watched as he let the edges of the eggs go all lacy and crisp before flipping it. Not a single node of egg stuck to the pan. The man was masterful, in his own way.

“Just that you could’ve just let me off myself. I’dve gone to hell, anyway.”

“Yes but your soul wouldn’t have been  _ won _ .” George spoke with immaculate patience, a staggering feat because the pan was wafting smells that would have made Gluttony gnaw through a wall. “It’s a matter of coaching to one side or another. If you don’t make the crucial decision, your soul just lingers in limbo until they chuck it in a bin. A bit of pepper on that one, if you don’t mind.”

Stanley glanced up briefly, smiled, and obeyed. He slid the egg onto bread, covered it with cheese, and shoveled it all back in the pan.

“Doesn’t explain why you took an interest in me in particular.”

George bristled. He didn’t care for this sudden bout of familiarity; once  _ that  _ moved in it inevitably bred forth a thousand mewling, puking little bundles of contempt. “I didn’t. I take an individual interest from time to time, on souls that seem particularly ripe. Ever heard of a bloke called Gary Glitter?”

“...no?”

‘Well you will. In spades.”

Stanley closed the sandwich and flipped it, the exposed side forming a delicate, buttery crust of carmelized bread and a spot where the cheese had dripped through  _ just so _ . George was about ready to eat his napkin.

“Still doesn’t explain me. I’m not capable of anything big. Even as a pop star, I was a flash in the pan.”

“Well, that’s the thing about the soul game. It’s a bit like beekeeping. You can distribute tiny little pamphlets among the worker bees as much as you like, but only the larvae fed royal jelly will ever be queen.”

Stanley furrowed his brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means give me the sandwich before I hit you with a chair.”

Stanley turned the sandwich out on a plate, having only a brief moment to view his creation before George pounced on it like a tiger. Licking crumbs from his hands, he looked up to find Stanley gazing in concern at him.

“Whum?” he said through a mouth full of food. Stanley shook his head and set to making his own sandwich.

“Anyway,” he said over the sizzle, “you might have needed to take my soul, but you didn’t need to talk to me so much.”

After George had cleared his windpipe with a sip of milk, he answered. “That is what is known in the industry as the soft sell. You’d have given up if I hadn’t talked you into it.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

“You kept talking about God and loopholes and whatnot, it kept me going.”

“Kept you wishing yourself into a hole, is what it did.”

“It kept me trying for Margaret, and made me realize where I went wrong. I was trying to be all sorts of different people, when I wanted Margaret to love  _ me _ . Not the millionaire, not the pop singer, plain old Stanley Moon.”

George gritted his teeth. “Yes, and who wouldn’t want  _ that _ .”

Apparently the subtle edge in his voice was lost on Stanley, who smiled at him as he turned the hob off and sat on the other side of the card table. Their knees touched. George stirred a little but didn’t exactly pull away.

“Well there you are, then” Stanley ruled, “I'm no great historical figure, and you’re no angel.” he hefted a glass of milk. “To ourselves.”

George laughed out of sheer misery and toasted, cracking the rim of Stanley’s only other drinking glass.

George cut quite a dashing figure as he stormed down Carnaby street, swishing his cape irritably. He could simply transmit himself to his next destination, but he needed to pound out his aggression through his heels.

The most aggravating thing about Stanley Moon was how he wasn’t aggravating at all. He was just so damned agreeable and pleasant and sweet and  _ how had he been George’s downfall? It didn’t make any bloody sense!  _ Staring up at George with that simpering look, hanging on his every word. He was just begging to be taken advantage of, and he was asking the devil himself for friendship? The bloody cheek!

Of course now George was duty-bound to take advantage of him. No hard feelings, no sour grapes. Strictly business.

He passed by a radio playing the thin, fingernail-on-glass pop that charted by the sheer virtue of deals made with him. Meanwhile in dingy basement clubs and other venues, artists making the real music that would be remembered beyond the decade strummed away with musical talents swapped for a soul. He was all over this city, in every crevice and crook, and Stanley Moon deigned to feel  _ sorry  _ for him? It was laughable. Stanley Moon with his meagre little room and his egg sandwiches and  _ don’t worry about the glass, George, always meant to buy more for company and now I have the excuse _ , for hell’s sake, he didn’t even have the grace to look angry at the broken cup!

George just barely squeaked into his three o’clock appointment, where he passed info to a vice squad sergeant who had a knack for arresting celebrities. Then he detoured to a consignment shop, where he managed to convince an up-and-coming pop star to ditch the group she was with and put out a solo record full of folk dirges that would bomb like the Hindenburg. He had so thoroughly forgotten about Stanley that it took a moment, once he found himself standing in line at the store with a box of drinkware, to remember where and why he needed these. George promptly threw the box down and left in a storm of curses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find it amusing how many subtle little instances there are in the movie of George surreptitiously drawing Stanley closer to him, let's see:  
> *after Stanley confesses he's afraid of heights (which George HAD to know, since he knew everything about him) George makes a point of being somewhere high every time he's finished with a wish, giving Stanley a reason to cling to him  
> *the way he puts Stanley in his bed and teases him with Raquel Welch, then immediately shoots him down about sex  
> *taking him out on a double-date to lift his spirits, leaving immediately when Stanley asks  
> *The way he constantly makes Stanley feel sorry for him, even when he's just sabotaged his wish  
> *the various instances of cuckolding, it's a disproportionate amount and it's very noticeable.  
> In short, George seems to covet Stanley's attention but for whatever reason can't consummate whatever it is he wants, so he spins him out like a toy. Very Pinteresque, I think


	4. Chapter 4

Stanley squinted at the canvas before him. “I guess that's a Reuben then, couldn’t tell by looking. I’m useless at this sort of thing.”

“Well, a guess is as good as a gander, as they say.” George pretended to cough and squeezed the peanut bag he’d smuggled into the museum, sending atomized bits of nut into the atmosphere. A nearby art patron inhaled it and sneezed all over said Reuben.

“Mind you, it’s a good painting regardless. Know how you can tell? The eyes follow you round the room.”

“Ah, fascinating,” George said without a hint of irony, “and how can you tell if a landscape painting is any good?”

“Dunno, the ducks follow you round the room? I’m not an art critic, George.”

“Could have fooled me.” Watching the museum guard through the corner of his glasses, George flaked a bit of varnish off a painting.

Stanley Moon came to a halt before a classic Greek statue. “Now there’s something anyone can appreciate. Simple, elegant. Can’t get classier than sleek white marble.”

“And if I told you that this statue was originally painted in gaudy, bright colors?”

“Pull the other one.”

“It’s true. Like a clown on mardi gras.”

Stanley frowned. “Well, that’s hardly dignified, is it?”

“Dignity is a relative term. If you’d told the Greeks that a load of tea-drinking, tie-wearing, bowler-hatted collegians scrubbed all the paint off their statuary, they’dve laugh you out of the parthenon.” George discreetly turned a painting composed of colored squares ninety degrees, prompting years of debate in the art world.

“Well they’re dead, aren’t they, the ancient Greeks? Got overtaken by the Romans.”

“That’s the nature of empires, Stanley. There’s always someone younger and hungrier coming up the stairs behind you.”

“Not the British empire, I hope.”

George let out a little chuckle. “Oh dear. Should I tell him?” he conspired with a sculpted bird.

Stanley shrugged, strolling along. “I guess I don’t get enough of this art business. Not really a sophis-softic-”

“Sophisticant?” George smiled patiently.

“That.” Stanley checked his watch and sighed. “I’ve got to run. See you next time, George?”

George was taken aback. It hadn’t seemed that long an afternoon, and he’d completely forgotten about tempting Stanley again. “Ah, yes, well, I'll have to check my schedule, I'm run ragged these days.”

Stanley smiled understandingly.

Three days later:

“Been meaning to ask you about that bloke Faust.”

“What did you want to know?” George stopped to pick at a sailor’s knot. The boat it fastened to the dock began to drift away.

“Why did he want a deal with the devil?”

“Him? He was bored to the teeth. He’d already accomplished everything there was to do in 15th century Germany (barring the plague) and he wanted a little extra thrill. I gave it to him happily.”

“How’d it turn out?”

“Dismal. He’s in hell right now, yammering away, all ‘Wer Wunder hofft, der stärke seinen Glauben’ while you’re trying to get some work done.  _ Insufferable _ .”

“I thought you gave him vast alchemical knowledge and the like. Why didn’t he, you know, brew an immortality potion?”

“I merely gave him scientific knowledge the likes of which you have access to now. And he found one ineffable truth.”

“What’s that?”

“15th century Germany is a miserable place to live. You get rats in every meal, none of the women shave. You can’t even imagine the smell. In the end he practically begged me to take him.”

“What about the girl? You know, the one he wished for? Is she in hell with him?”

George sighed. He might have known it would come to this.

“Well, simply taking her would’ve interfered with her natural freedom of choice. I had to offer her something so we could say the table was square.” George stopped to take pictures of a vacationing couple, making sure his finger was firmly covering the lens as he used up all their film.

“Did she take it?”

“Take it? She ran screaming! I don’t know if you've ever seen a picture, but Faust had hair on the palms of his hands and a grin that could curdle water. In the end she was saved from damnation, not to mention a lifetime of unsatisfactory bed-tennis with a human haystack.”

“Would you have given the same choice to Margaret?”

George smiled grimly.  _ Ahh, so we get to the meat of the conversation. _ “I wouldn’t have offered her Faust, if that’s what you mean.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” Stanley’s dark little eyes bored holes in George's. 

“You didn’t seem that concerned about her soul when you were making wishes.”

“I didn’t get a chance to think things through, not really. Anyway, you still didn’t answer my question.”

“Stanley, Stanley, Stanley,” George chided, “here you are again, asking questions I'm not sure you want to know the answer to. Everyone loves sausage but no one wants to see how it’s made.”

“I know exactly how it’s made. By me mum with a roll of pig guts and a bowl of mince, every Sunday.”

“How delightfully ghastly.” George tossed a crisp to a seagull, ensuring it would spend the rest of its life dive-bombing passerby for the chance to taste another. 

“Tasted like heaven.” Stanley’s face grew wistful as his gaze turned inward. “Lovely bit of sage and parsley, maybe a bit of rosemary if we were lucky. Some salt and pepper. Fried up nice and crisp ‘cause it was about half fat.”

“It’s a wonder your arteries haven’t exploded yet.”

Stanley mopped a bit of drool from his mouth with a sleeve. “Anyway, you  _ still  _ didn’t answer my question. Would you have given Margaret a choice, crashed my lovely dream had it ever worked out?”

“But it never did, Stanley, so what’s the point of dealing in hypotheticals?”

“What’s the point? I’ll tell you the point, it’s that you would have betrayed me one last time after all your tricks.”

George placed a hand on his chest. “Moi? Betray vou? Stanley, I think you’ll find I'm more than fair considering the circumstances. Did God ever let you be a millionaire?”

Stanley grit his teeth. “...no.” He said grudgingly.

“Did he ever let you go on television or take you on fair rides? Did he let you kiss Margaret, Stanley?”

“Did he ever turn me into a nun or cuckold me?”

George lifted his eyebrows ever so slightly. “Touché.”

The two men walked a bit apart, separate but matching steps enough so they remained in each other’s orbit.

“It’s just hard to trust you after all that,” Stanley confessed at length. “I know deep down I really shouldn’t, but you’re a likable chap, George.”

George gave a long-suffering sigh. “That’s what they all say, before they repent. Sure, I'm an alright bloke when people want something from me, but the second the debt gets called in, it’s all  _ ‘get thee behind me, satan!’ _ ”

Stanley looked a bit taken aback. “Well, I wasn’t going that far, George. I want to stay friends. I want to trust you.”

“You have my word—”

“That’s just it, your word don’t carry a whole lot of weight behind it. You promise me all these things, but then there’s other things lurking in the background, and then things turn into things and suddenly it’s all a shambles.”

George turned away theatrically. “I like that very much indeed!”

Stanley snagged his cape. “It’s not like that—”

“—it certainly feels like it.” George sniffed. “Here I tried to give you seven lovely wishes and you act like I poured you a cupful of poison. I really wonder sometimes whether my generosity is more of a burden.”

Stanley tugged on his sleeve. “Come on, don’t be like this.”

George yanked his cape free and strode off. “Oh nevermind, Stanley, it seems like I'm not trustworthy enough to be seen with. Heaven forfend I try to be nice about my occupation. I might as well go about my dark business without so much as a ‘please.’”

Stanley’s defeated little “wait” felt warm in his chest. It felt nice to be pursued for once. And anyway, what did Stanley mean, dredging up past business? Yes, he had been intentionally sabotaging his wishes, but did Stanley really expect to get a miracle for free?

George stopped at a changing tent and snapped. The tent blew over, exposing a middle-aged man in the middle of changing into trunks. As he shouted and covered his iceberg-colored body, George strode away. He was going to give Stanley time to think about things, really let him stew.

Two days later:

“Simon Magus was an absolute raving loony,” George said over the sizzle of homemade sausage in a pan. “Ran around completely starkers, came on to anything with two legs. Sometimes less. Sometimes more.”

Stanley grated potato into the pan. “Isn’t he what they named Simony after?”

George was impressed. “Spot on! He concocted the act of paying for a position in the church, not that he was the worst offender. That would be Aloysius the Inconsistent. He was at once the friar, bishop, and archdeacon of his own house.”

“So Simon made a deal with you too?”

“Oh yes, he was from Samaria, but he wasn’t what you’d call a good samaritan.”

“I heard he performed magic. He was levitating above the forum when Peter prayed to God to stop his flight.”

“Stop his guy-wires, more like it. The man was a stage magician, and not a very good one. Mind you, it was all new to the Samaritans. He did the ‘coin behind your ear’ trick to a bloke and he had a heart attack right there and then.”

“What’d he sell his soul for then?”

“The cure to syphilis.”

Stanley turned a mouthwatering fry-up onto a plate and divvied it up. He’d given George the bigger half, he noticed.

Stanley took a bite so his next words were clogged with potato-and-sausage mixture. “What would you have done if I'd made my wishes for the betterment of mankind? Say, if I'd wished for world peace?”

“But you didn’t.”

“But what if I had?”

“But you didn’t.”

“But what—” Stanley sighed and shoved another bite in his mouth. “Nevermind. Has anyone used their wish for the betterment of the world?”

“Now that you mention it, yes.”

“Aha!”

“That’s how we got Spam.”

“Aho.”

George devoured his dish. Protein and starch, all bound together with coagulating fat. It wasn’t just how unhealthy it was, he marveled as he licked his plate, it was how artfully unhealthy it was. All you could taste was salt and heat, something that satisfied the lizardy part of the brain that commanded the body to go out and hunt. He sketched out an idea for fast food meals, mind moving like a hummingbird.

Stanley watched him eat with a complimented (but a bit sick) smile. “Glad you like it. Oh, and sorry about the other day.”

George genuinely had to think for a moment before he remembered what Stanley was referring to. “Oh yes. Think nothing of it. I’m not one to hold a grudge.”

“Well it’s not just about you. It didn’t make me feel good, thinking I'd run you off.”

George took a sip of milk (they shared the glass between them) and stared. “So other people’s moods affect you that strongly?”

“Yeah, ‘s called empathy.” Stanley carved up his food with his fork. “Why, don’t they do that to you?”

George pondered a way to express the vast and complex solipsism he’d developed over the vast millennia of his existence, not to mention being born without what one might pedantically call a conscience.

“Sort of,” he allowed.

“I  _ knew  _ it. You  _ can  _ feel bad for other people, but it’s all wrapped up in how you feel about yourself. Because you took a shine to me, it made you feel bad that I wasn’t getting on with the wishes.”

George chewed on that, along with an errant bit of gristle. “Yes, I suppose that’s...huh.”

“And you care that I care because I'm the first person to talk to you like a person in ages.” Stanley beamed like he’d just proofed a theorem for faster-than-light space travel.

George swallowed. He was suddenly, dizzyingly terrified. Stanley Moon had, in his own simple way, put together something about George that he himself was completely blind to. It was frightening that a mere mortal had that much insight into him. Worse, the implication that anyone (but especially Stanley Moon) could affect him that deeply.

“So what do you intend to do now?” he asked carefully.

Stanley’s attention had turned back to his food. “Whmhm?”

“You’ve got this insight about me, what do you intend to do about it?”

Stanley looked at him like he’d been asked to play piano underwater.

“Well, change my thinking round, for starters. I guess I've been coming at you all wrong. You’re a good bloke, George, but you’re not like other people.”

George felt a little tension in his chest. “I see. So it’s to be  _ guerre d'usure _ then.”

“No thanks, I'm full. But anyway, now that I get all that, we can be better friends now ‘cause I've stopped expecting certain things from you.”

George blinked. “...what?”

Stanley smiled at him, reassuringly, George realized, he was trying to reassure  _ the devil  _ of all people. “It’s all right. I’m getting used to it. Like me mum says, takes all types to make a sausage. ‘Course, she was talking about offal, but the meanin’s still there.”

George cleared his throat and casually resumed the business of eating. He’d unpack that later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is at least partially based on the Pete n Dud sketches, which I think are the best and most intimate comedy they ever did. There is something really charming how they drive each other into corpsing every time, like two people who are having a fabulous just being in each other's presence. As much as I love the movie, it's a level of intimacy they couldn't reproduce for the big screen and I think that worked against it. Still, I think they have chemistry for dayyyyyys and I love this movie to death anyway.


	5. The Birds and the Bees

The difficult thing about being the devil was that you kept your own hours. It was shockingly easy to lose track of time when you never slept. George had just pulled off a masterful four-way tempt between the members of a band and a series of ladies (or reasonable facsimile thereof) eager to go backstage for them, and he decided to call off and talk to Stanley about it a bit. Then he looked at the clock and realized it was past four in the morning and Stanley probably wasn’t up.

He popped by his place anyway, just to check on him. 

The roof where he went to spy on Stanley was by now kitted with a sleeping bag, a few pillows, and a large set of field glasses, everything the average peeping tom would need to feel comfortable. George hefted his glasses and peered past the layers of grime on Stanley’s windows to his bed.

Stanley made quite a precious picture, all tucked up in his covers. He slept with one arm flung out as if to arrest a sudden fall. George made a few quick adjustments and...ah, there it was. He was currently peering into Stanley’s dreams.

The setting was the rustic cottage from his fifth wish. The light was gauzy and warm, as if someone was filming a soap advert. George chuckled wryly. There was Stanley, pinned between Margaret and her handsome husband, fraught with anxiety. He was confessing his feelings for Margaret, how horrible he felt, how he loved them both. George licked his lips. That wish had been so delightfully masochistic, he wished it had lasted longer. He wondered what the outcome would be. Out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Some kind of murder-suicide?

The chap in the dream who looked like George smiled angelically. He spoke but in the manner of dreams, he didn’t say individual words but the whole meaning behind them. He told Stanley that he loved them, both of them, he understood and he wanted them to be happy. George was just working up a good sneer at how self-gratifying this acceptance was, when his dream avatar planted a kiss on Stanley.

George lowered the glasses, squinting. No. That couldn’t have been…

He raised the glasses again. The dream had drifted in the three of them exchanging kisses in a dance so intricate it made the eye dizzy. Stanley received equal attention from both corners.

George fumbled with the field glasses and failed to catch them, watched them smash on the road far below. He cursed.

It was only natural that Stanley develop a little crush on him. He was, after all, the prettiest angel. And he’d often said that George was the first person to pay any attention to him in years…

George wondered how the dream would end. Would his church programming kick in and end the scenario in a rain of shame? Or would Stanley be able to get past the social mores he’d been raised with?

George wondered how dream-sex with himself would go. What did Stanley really know of sex, anyway? All his wishes had ended before the really good part.

George jogged himself out of that line of thought. He was not going to be bedding the good Stanley Moon at any point in the near future, that was for certain. Let him labor under his little crushes and flagellate himself over some antiquated notion of propriety. There was nothing to be gained by deflowering the little short-order cook. 

However there was endless amusement to be reaped by shoving it in his face.

George showed up at Wimpy’s at the crack of noon the next day, just after a morning’s work rearranging bus schedules to cause a pileup. He practically radiated smug excitement as he seated himself near the grill. Alas, Margaret did not seem to be at her post today, which would have compounded the fun.

“Alright, George,” Stanley tossed off cheerily. George studied him for any hint of shame or embarrassment. None so far.

“Hullo Stanley, how’ve you been sleeping?”

If he detected any sinister undertones in George’s question, Stanley didn’t show it. Instead he flashed a gormless grin as he flipped burgers with ease.

“Not bad, George. I’m off at three today, fancy a walk?”

_ Fancy a kiss? _ George thought acidly. Really, Stanley had no right to pretend he didn’t have a crush on him, silly little sot. 

“Oh, I'm game if you are.” George lowered his glasses and fluttered his eyelashes. Stanley gave him a confused smile.

“Alright then, the usual?” he served up a plate with barely a tremble. 

George grit his teeth in frustration. There were a great many humiliations in the universe, but competing against a fast-food waitress for Stanley Moon’s affection had to be up there, smack dab between “landing on a bicycle with no seat” and “shitting yourself in the houses of parliament.” Really, if the little twerp couldn’t come to terms with his own feelings, George wasn’t about to drag him along. 

“Thanks, Stanley.” he slid his glasses back on in defeat. He choked down his food and went to loiter somewhere out of sight until three, then he gave it an extra half-hour to see if Stanley would give up. The cook stood loyally in front of Wimpy’s like the world’s most depressing monument sign.

Stanley looked up from checking his watch and sighed in relief. “Oh good, I was worried something happened to you.”

“Yes, well,” George replied stiffly, “I'm a busy man, Stanley.”

“I know. Thanks for making time for me.” Stanley put his hands in his pockets and just smiled away at George. Sickening. George aggressively grabbed his elbow and dragged him along, taking steps that Stanley practically had to skip to keep up with.

“Margaret said she’d go to the street market with me this weekend,” Stanley said in-between harried breaths, “I just asked and she said yes like it was nothing. ‘Ere, can’t you slow down a bit?”

George relented, but didn’t release his elbow. “Well, hooray and hallelujah, you had it coming to ya.”

“I mean, it don’t sound like much, but it’s a big step for me.” Stanley looked down shyly. “After the boost in confidence you gave me, that is.”

_ Yes, life coach extraordinaire, that’s me to a T.  _ George stopped to rip the bottom off a notice pinned to a telephone pole, making it so a number for a sex hotline now serviced a bloke wanting to sell his bicycle. “I don’t suppose you want any pointers or anything like that?”

“Why? Will it cost me my soul?” Stanley chuckled at his own joke, smile fading as he saw George’s look. “Sorry. I know you mean well.”

_ Do I Stanley? Do I really? _ Iago could not have put on a more convincing act as George smiled down at him. “Think nothing of it, Stanley. But you do know the really big secret to the first date, don’t you?”

Stanley got a worried look. “Do i? What is it?”

George took sick pleasure in examining a theatre board to stall answering. “Look at that, a new Pinter play. I hear the dialog consists of nothing but pauses.”

Stanley jogged his elbow. “Come on, George. What is it?”

George pretended to study the board another minute before he resumed walking, dragging Stanley in his wake.

“The really big secret is that sex will be on your brain, Stanley. You will spend the whole date with half your mind occupied with sex, and not listening to her. And that’s the thing about women, Stanley, they notice.”

“They do?” doubt rendered Stanley’s face into an adorable knot. “No-one bloody told me.”

“Good thing I'm here, then.” George kicked a bit of litter into the path of a conservatively-dressed gentleman, he tripped into another similarly-dressed man and the sound of their argument followed the pair down the street.

“Women, like bees, have an extra-sensory perception about these things. They can smell fear. They can tell if someone wants to have sex with them from a mile away.”

“Who would want to have sex with bees?”

“You’d be surprised.” George steered Stanley around a puddle of dark liquid, leaving a man walking the opposite direction to step into the puddle with his expensive-looking shoes. “Anyway, the secret is that first dates rarely ever end up in sex. You’ve got to trick yourself into believing that sex is completely off the table, possibly in the cupboard next to the jars of olives and things, but certainly not on the table.”

“Be nice if it was, just once,” Stanley remarked glumly.

“Cheer up, Stanley. Just because it’s off for the first date doesn’t mean you won’t eventually get there.” George weighed his next words carefully. Shot in the dark, but he had to try. “Now if you want me to really fix things—”

“It’s all right George, don’t go wasting your powers on me.” Stanley gave his arm a little squeeze. “Save them for something worthwhile, like your fight with Him.”

_ Typical Stanley Moon, too modest to live. Oh, you’re quite precious, aren’t you? _ George smiled through his annoyance.

“As you like, then. Got anything planned for later today?”

“Actually I thought I'd drop by me mum’s, see how she’s doing. Maybe do some laundry.”

“Ah yes, Ada Moon, age 61. Raised you by yourself, didn’t she?”

“How’d you—” Stanley had to think a minute. “Oh yeah, you know everything about me. Well yeah, me dad wasn’t around so we had to make do. It was a hard life. Sometimes she’d be up all night, up the stairs, coping with my uncle Bertie.”

“Was she a devout woman?”

“Oh yeah. Used to hear her chanting ‘oh God, oh God’ when I was trying to sleep.”

George made a suspicious noise, hiding his face before Stanley saw him.

“And what does dear Ada get from these visits, then? Is she willing to paw through your drawers just to get a glimpse of you?”

Stanley stopped, leaving George to lumber on for an awkward half-step before he craned around, irritated.

“I’ve just put my finger on something,” the cook said, brow furrowing, “it’s been niggling me this whole time and you just now made me put it into words.”

George raised his eyebrows. This had to be good.

“Are all relationships like that to you?”

“What, laundry-based?” George goaded.

“Like, you only get to give, and you only give to get. Dunno how to put it—”

“You mean transactional?” George removed his glasses and looked primly at him. “Stanley, all relationships are transactional, you’ll find. Once you get down to the meat of them, anyway. Whether it’s a material gain or intangible benefit, everyone gives to get.”

Stanley wet his lips. He was nervous about something. “What, every single person? Two strangers saying hi on the street?”

“That’s what we call a social reward, to acknowledge and be acknowledged. Quite selfish, if you ask me, asking a complete stranger to affirm your existence.”

“And when you gave me my soul back,” Stanley blurted, “what did you get out of it? You lost everything.”

George ground his teeth and did a magnificent job of not looking enraged.

In a tone only used by mothers on their very last straw, one that sounded to the unthinking ear like infinite patience, he said, “it made me feel good. I swapped material gain for an intangible benefit. I traded at a loss, Stanley, and you reaped the benefit. You got one over on the devil. Cheers.”

Stanley looked puzzled. “I thought you did it because you thought it would look good to God.”

“That was just a fringe benefit to me at the time. Looking beyond the fringe, I had built up a rapport with you, invested enough social capitol that I felt it would benefit me to be generous. Don’t expect it again, I've quite learned my lesson.”

Stanley looked a bit ill, hunched over with his hands in his pockets. “Erm,” he said, “I don't...I don't think I want to visit my mother just now.”

George arched his eyebrows. “Really? In that case I could show you a fascinating—”

“I-I think I'll just go home if it’s all the same to you, George. Think I'll just have a lie-down and leave it alone for now.”

George felt a sudden and steep loss, like he’d been wading and suddenly felt the edge of an underwater cliff at his toes. He reached out. “No, hang on, Stanley—”

Stanley rolled his hand off his shoulder. “‘Night, George. Hope you can get on with work all right.”

George watched his tiny frame retreat among the passer-by until he disappeared. He could easily have called him back, charmed him with a word or two, and they could have fallen back into their aimless walk. But that would have been admitting Stanley Moon meant more to him than the average soul, and he didn’t. He couldn’t. There was nothing special about Stanley Moon or his now-secondhand soul.

George went home and tried to have an intelligent discussion with his sins; after a few tourneys Avarice nearly got into a slap-fight about tip money at the bar and George drank himself into a stupor again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think my favorite surviving sketch of Not Only...But Also has to be the father/son talk sketch. Every time Peter Cook says, "it's a lovely chair, Roger" I just die of laughter. There's also this really sad undercurrent running through it (and through a lot of Peter Cook sketches, come to think of it) where you get the impression that he's aware of what's really going on, but his upbringing prevents him from doing anything about it. A lot of his sketches end with betrayal, infidelity, and separation. His characters are people who want to understand and connect with the world aound them, but always come up short. Dude was wrasslin' with some demons, is all I'm sayin


	6. The Kiss

George had gotten a replacement set of field glasses, but Stanley’s dreams did not reach the excitement of last time’s, not before his weekend date. He was at the market at least an hour before Stanley and Margaret, scoping out hiding places. Margaret turned up in a minidress the color of overripe plums, with eyeshadow to match. Stanley, at least, had put on a clean shirt. George noted an uptick of nervousness when he met up with the slightly-taller Margaret, but fell in beside her easily. They trawled the different tables and booths, while George kept a discreet distance behind them. 

Margaret smiled at Stanley when he spoke, once in a while stopping to chime in her own wisdom. George wondered what kind of fascinating topics they’d discuss. He snuck a little bit closer, just so he could just hear—

“—took me so long to ask you out. I mean, guess I spent so long inflating you in my head, I forgot there’s a real person in there.” George was shocked at how candid Stanley sounded. This was the tongue-tied little cook who had pined for six years?

“Well you were much nicer about it than most blokes. Ralph, he just tossed his hat at me and said ‘see you at the theatre eight sharp.’ Didn’t even bother to get my last name.”

“There, see? Can’t do much worse than that.” Stanley laughed. He seemed totally at ease for a change. “Anyway, my friend George—”

George immediately ducked behind a fruit stand, cursing under his breath.

“—he’s been talking to me, helped me sort everything out.”

“George? He’s the one that comes in, likes everything well-done, right? The one that looks like a sexy drinking straw?”

“That’s the one,” Stanley said cheerfully, “anyway, he convinced me to get outside my head a bit. Good bloke, all things considered. In fact—” Stanley did an abrupt about-face. Caught emerging from his hiding place, George pretended to examine a bag of cherries, cursing under his breath. 

“Oi! George, come on over!” 

George looked over at the pair with feigned nonchalance. Stanley was waving him over, looking nothing but happy to see him. Either he had gained monumental acting skill since last they talked, or he had gotten over George’s words. 

George sighed and straightened out, trying to saunter casually over to the pair.

“I told Margaret you’d probably be around today,” Stanley said, nudging him with an elbow, “if you weren’t busy.”

George nearly sneered at the familiarity. “As it is, I'm between engagements—”

“Walk with us for a bit, then.’ Stanley took his elbow and tugged him along. George was startled enough by this sudden boldness that he let himself be dragged.

“As I was telling Margaret, I'd sent away for a specimen of  _ Actias luna _ last week and I thought it would never get here—”

“It means luna moth,” Margaret broke in, “Stanley’s so clever, aren’t you Stanley?”

Stanley blushed in an endearing way. “Y-yeah. And I thought something had happened to it, you know, in the post. And today I get this big envelope—”

“—you think they’d send it in a box, it’s so big—”

“—and it’s nearly intact, but one of the wings’ come off. So I'm sitting there wondering if I should glue it—”

“—you’d think they’d make glue for just this sort of thing—”

“—but nevermind that, because Margaret’s come up with a smashing idea for it, she says ‘what about eyelash glue?’ and I say ‘I never’ because I didn’t know such a thing exists—”

“—and I say it’s just perfect for fitting delicate things together, that’s its whole job, and I've got a tube of it right here—”

“—and so here we are, I'm going to glue a moth’s wing back on like a pair of falsies.” Stanley paused and looked at George’s face. Searching for approval, George realized.

He couldn’t decide how to react. Never had such a banal anecdote been related to him like it was the plot of a John le Carré spy novel. 

“Mmm,” he said. Perhaps Stanley’s face fell, just a fraction. But Margaret pushed on, oblivious. She didn’t even seem bothered by the sudden addition of George as a third wheel.

The date went on quite as it already had been, Margaret and Stanley lobbing the conversational ball back and forth, George a barely-verbal shadow at their heels. They talked about the art museum, the seaside, the zoo; all places, George realized with a little stab of resentment, that the two of them had gone. He didn’t appreciate being the dry run for Stanley’s fidgety little conquest.

Margaret rounded on them at the edge of the market, planting a little kiss on Stanley’s cheek.

“Bye Stanley,” she said, “I've got to go now, but I've had the loveliest time. Let’s do it again sometime soon?’

Stanley looked like he had just gotten a shot of a very potent opioid. “Yeah,” his mouth ran on autopilot, “my shift’s starting soon, anyway. See you round, Margaret.”

He drunkenly weaved his way down the sidewalk, George actually had to grab hold of his elbow to prevent him crashing into a telephone pole.

“Look where you’re going, Stanley,” he admonished. 

“Sorry George, guess my head’s in the clouds,” Stanley said dreamily. “She went on a date with me, George. You know how long I've been waiting for that?”

“Longer than you should have,” George said in a clipped tone, pulling him along. “Anyway it was barely a date, wasn’t it? You weren’t even alone with her for most of it.”

“She smiled at me,'' Stanley pressed on like he hadn’t even heard him. “She laughed at my jokes. We talked like it was nothing, like people talk every day.” A shadow passed over his face and he pulled a tiny tube of glue from his pocket. “Wonder what I should do with this. You think she’ll be able to tell if I've used any, if I give it back to her?”

George put two and two together. “Your moth isn’t missing a wing, is it, Stanley?”

Stanley looked guilty. “Not as such, no. You think she’ll be sore if she finds out? Blimey, I hope she won’t be too angry.”

George nearly doubled over at a sudden fit of mirth. He smothered giggles in his sleeve as Stanley looked on, bemused.

“Oh no,” he choked out, once he’d got control of himself again, “I'm sure she’ll be ready to start a massive war over it. A whole tube of eyelash glue? She’ll skin you alive.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic, George,” Stanley admonished gently.

George sobered suddenly. “You’re absolutely right, of course. I hope your marriage is founded on this deception. One day your grandkids will find the tube of glue buried out under the old conker tree in the garden, bring it to you while you’re on your deathbed demanding answers.”

Stanley set his jaw and turned away from George. “Impossible. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

George didn’t care for this tactic, this shutting down on him. He danced ahead of Stanley, easy enough to do with his height advantage (sexy drinking straw? See how he liked it when the straw outpaced him) and bent down so their faces were nearly level.

“Oh Stanley, really, I couldn't go away thinking you were cross with me. The glue was a bolt of inspiration, really,” he said in his most cloying tone.

“Leave it.” Stanley tried to weave around him, but got cut off again and again. “I mean it, George.”

They came to Wimpy’s, where the other cook Sid was just scraping off the grill. He doffed his apron with a brief nod at the pair of them, then left just as suddenly. There were no customers in the store, no reprieve from George. He danced around Stanley, everywhere he tried to go.

Stanley sighed. “Look, I've just had a lovely time with Margaret, why do you have to go spoiling it? Just cause I did it without your help—”

George chuckled. “Oh Stanley, I'm not bitter. It’s worth missing my chance to get back to heaven to see you strike out. If you wanted to have sex with her, I could’ve had her in your bed tonight, not that there’s much room in there for anything besides the lice.”

Stanley gave him a scathing look. “I don’t want her to just...go to bed with me. I want her to live with me and die with me and, well, everything with me.”

“And you’ve set out on that path quite well, Stanley. The foundation of every good relationship is a lie.”

“It was just a whatsit. Icebreaker. Anyway, there’s no need to try and knock me down because you’re bitter about God. By everything you’ve told me, you were a bad match, the two of you.” Stanley unbuttoned his shirt to slip on his chef’s whites. “I think you’re an alright bloke when you’re not thinking about him, maybe he’s cut out the fire and brimstone since he stopped seeing you?”

“Ah  _ yes _ , you’ve done me a  _ favor  _ by refusing to give me your soul back for a quick nip? Well done, Stanley Moon, you’re a gentleman and a scholar.” George began a sarcastic slow clap. “All in the service of that brain trust known as maggie Spencer. I can’t decide what was more fascinating, her vapid take on modern art, or her persistence in pronouncing it ‘Pi-CAY-so.”

Stanley pulled his jacket over his head, cheeks flaming. “You’ve no need to talk about Margaret like that. I mean it. One more word—”

George crowded into his personal space. “What, Stanley? You’ll do what?” The very concept of Stanley Moon getting violent was entertaining enough, but the fact that he would get upset enough to take on the devil...well, this  _ had  _ to be good.

Stanley did not seem at all put off by his height advantage. “I’ll get rough, is what I'll do. I won’t let you disrespect her.”

George laughed sharply. “Oh Stanners-nanners, who could possibly refuse in the face of such fury?”

Stanley shocked him with a shove, pushing straight out from his shoulders so that he had a direct line of force to George’s torso. Nearly bowled him over. George recovered, still laughing breathlessly.

“Oh dear Stanley’s going to kick my head in, then? So bold after he’s got his soul back? What about Margaret’s soul, hmm?”

Just like that, the fire in Stanley went out.

“I told you to leave her alone,” he said miserably.

George craned over him, cape billowing around the two of them, putting their faces nose-to-nose.

“How easy do you think it would be to tempt Margaret,” he breathed, “or your mother? I may not get your soul, Stanley, but theirs are quite open for the taking.”

Stanley’s hands unclenched from fists, now they touched George’s lapel placatingly. “George, there’s no need—look, I'm sorry…”

George leaned into him the more he shrank away. “Or perhaps precious little Stanley will give me his soul, hmm? Just to keep his loved ones safe. How much is it all worth, Stanley? What are you willing to do?”

It wasn’t clear who initiated the kiss. When their lips touched, time became like a series of slides that progressed without any sense of forward motion. Suddenly Stanley was gripping the back of his head, now George had thrown his arms around Stanley as he pressed into him even further, now Stanley’s leg had crept up the side of him as if Stanley couldn’t get enough of him in hand, now the bell on the door tinkled—

The two of them fell apart in just enough time to see an old man, frozen on the threshold, staring at them.

“Erm, nevermind,” he croaked, and quickly went back out again.

George watched him go with a blank rage, cool as ice on the outside.

“Oh, ah, is that the time?” Stanley murmured. He smoothed his hair down and looked everywhere but George. “I’d getter be shifting on with my bet—getting on with my shift. Sorry, George.”

George looked down at him, at Stanley Moon scrubbing the grill like he was trying to take the black off it.

“Alright, Stanley,” he said airily. He held the door when he left so the bell didn’t sound, leaving Stanley to labor fruitlessly for a few long moments before he risked looking up. He caught George on the other side of the door and quickly looked down again pretending to work hard. 

The next day was Sunday, which was always a rotten day. George had been teasing the idea of the charity single out. He liked how insidious it was because on the surface it sounded like a good idea and a tremendous virtue, but not only would it inspire wrath in holiday shoppers having to sit through the thousandth repetition of stale pop tunes by untrained singers, it would discourage donations to that very charity. A plan diabolical in its simplicity, he had made no headway on it all morning. It was, he reflected as he paced the streets, all down to Sunday being His day. Nothing ever turned out right for him on Sundays, the whole mood was off.

George gave up thinking and sat down on a nearby bench. Someone left a cigarette smouldering on the lip of a wastebin, with a flick of his wrist George sent it into the bin where it would light a fire in a few hours’ time. George leaned back and closed his eyes, enjoying a good seethe.

“Hullo, dear.”

His eyes shot open.

As he did every so often, God manifested himself on earth. And as he did so on those occasions where he needed to take physical form, God took the face of a rather charmingly rumpled Michael Redgrave.

God gave a little nod. He had manifested on a bench directly opposite George, now he manifested a bag of crisps and began feeding pigeons.

George groaned and covered his face. “Fantastic, just who I wanted to see right now.”

“You’re not still sore, are you, Lucy?”

George uncovered his face and glared. “Don’t call me that, I've told you.”

“Ah, I do forget sometimes.” God let a pigeon alight on his finger. “Well, just thought I'd pop down to check on you, that’s all.

Benign, all-abiding love rolled off him in waves. It was very hard to stay mad at God when he manifested right in your presence, but George made the effort.

“Well you’ve checked, you’ve popped, don’t let me keep you.” George waved him away, slumping on the bench.”

A small frown quirked His mouth. “I truly do not mean this as a punishment, my lamb. This was meant as a teachable moment.”

“Oh thank you very much,  _ dad _ ,” George said dryly. He really hated sounding like a rebellious teenager, but it was what he was reduced to in His presence, every time.

“You’ve abided by my edicts this whole time, yet you’ve failed to grasp the intent behind them. I can’t very well let you back into heaven if you don’t understand.”

“Oh I understand perfectly,” George said bitterly, “muggins Lucifer just gets the short end of the stick once more. You want to use me to punish people for being people, but you don’t want to get your hands dirty.”

God shook his head. “I was so afraid of this when I cast you down all those millennia ago. But Lucifer, dear, you really are the only one suited for this job. Of all the angels, you were the closest to humanity. I’m afraid none of the others really  _ got  _ humans. I once asked Uriel to tidy up the Russian revolution, he leveled the forest in Tunguska.”

“Ah yes, I should feel  _ flattered  _ at being press-ganged into service.” George folded his arms, then quickly un-folded them because of how petulant it made him look. “Well, your omnipotence, I have to disagree with you there. I feel no more pity for man than I do the lowly dung beetle or that breed of fish that suctions onto the bottoms of whales.”

“Really?” God’s voice was dangerously light. “Not a single soul do you feel any kinship for?”

George had turned his head and closed his eyes in a show of disinterest, now they shot open again. God’s face was blank. He simply turned to look back at the road.

There was a zebra crossing, and there was Stanley Moon, armful of groceries because he hadn’t asked for a bag (never asked for a bloody bag) Stanley rooting around in the pile and stopping mid-crossing to retrieve a can he’d dropped in the shuffle, and almost on cue there was a juggernaut speeding down the way, ignoring traffic signals and barreling down—

Unthinking, George leapt to his feet and snapped. A tyre burst on the juggernaut and it swerved. George could not have transmitted himself any faster than he ran, hooking Stanley with one arm and bearing him away from the road. The juggernaut swerved into a light pole before plowing into a butcher’s truck. Both drivers got out of their cabs and began yelling at one another.

George realized he hadn’t exhaled in a very long time and took a gulping breath. He looked back at where he’d been. The bench was empty. He turned to Stanley, who was looking at him with a mixture of relief and shock. He released the smaller man immediately.

“Bloody look where you’re going,” he managed to choke out. He walked away, bearing himself a few blocks before his legs turned to rubber and he had to sit down again.

So that was God’s little game, was it? Call Stanley home before he could be tempted again? Or just to hurt George because he thought the cook was a weak spot?

George rubbed his temple. Well, there was nothing else for it. He had to stop seeing Stanley at all. No spying from his roof, no following him around on errands, no nothing. He’d get the sins to turn him away at the club door. With a twinge he realized that meant no more of Stanley’s deliciously unhealthy food (of which he’d grown quite fond, despite its vulgar simplicity) or his long talks about the nature of mankind. Not because he felt anything but contempt for Stanley, but he couldn’t give God this one little victory on top of everything else he’d already won.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> George really reads as a jilted ex when you examine his dialogue about god. I just took that premise and ran with it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: this chapter contains attempted suicide.

It had been over a month. At times, George was able to put Stanley from his mind completely. He was able to engineer the sound of pop music for the next twenty years, install a few political figures who spelled decades of strife, and caused a misprint in an academic paper that would split the Ornithological society in twain. Really, he only thought of Stanley when he remembered a jolly good anecdote and turned to tell it to someone—only to find empty space at his side. The sins had long since heard all his good stories, not that they cared. 

George paced the tower bridge, lost in thought. Stanley Moon was probably quite well-set now, in any case. He would continue on his painfully slow mission of coaxing Margaret to unite with him, perhaps even make a few friends on the side. George passed other pedestrians, rendered into dark blobs by the night fog. It wasn’t like he’d had the monopoly on Stanley’s attention anyway. He’d merely seen what was already there, that everyone had ignored. Humanity had a habit of doing that, he’d found. He passed by another dark shape looming over the railing. It wasn’t like Stanley was terrible company either, once you got past his shyness. It wasn’t like—

George stopped in his tracks, rapidly tracing his steps back a few feet.

“What do you think you’re doing, you bloody little fool!”he shouted.

Stanley winced, looking guilty. He stood on the railing, gripping a support cable. “Alright, George? Didn’t think I'd run into you here.”

“Answer my question, what in (and I cannot stress this enough) the hell do you think you’re doing up there? Get down, right this instant!”

Stanley winced, then reluctantly started climbing down. He yelped when George yanked him off when he was halfway.

“Bloody stupid Moon, that’s what they should have called you,” George grumbled, tucking his cape around the both of them as he pulled Stanley along. “All that trouble about getting your soul back and you’re just going to chuck yourself off a bridge?”

Heat rose in Stanley’s cheeks. “Like you’ve any room to talk.”

George guffawed. “Listen to her! I know exactly what I'm talking about, sweetie, and if you think—”

Stanley twisted out of his grip, face flaming. “Forget it, George. Good night.”

George caught his hand, wouldn’t let him walk away. “No no, I want to hear it. You know exactly what awaits you if you off yourself, you’re being absolutely pigheaded—”

“And you’re bloody confusing!” Stanley exploded. “I never know where I stand with you! You act like you want to be my friend, then you trick me. You do everything to coax me back, you—” he gestured, looking everywhere but George, “—you save my life, and then you don’t talk to me for a month? I can’t take it George, this constant up and down. It’s worse than when I was alone!”

George was legitimately at a loss for words, a rare occurrence. “I thought, you know, with Margaret—”

“I can't talk to Margaret!” Stanley had the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “Not the way we talk about things. And anyway, I felt so guilty about the moth lie I haven’t asked her out again. I don’t think she’s even noticed.”

He stopped abruptly, looking down at the pavement as if he wished it would liquify and swallow him.

George cleared his throat. “Look, this isn’t the place for discussion. Let’s get back to my place, drinks on the house—”

Stanley barked a short laugh. His nose was leaking. “So you can confuse me some more? No, George, I should get home.”

George jogged up and slid an arm around his shoulder. Stanley pushed it off. George replaced it. Stanley pushed it off again.

“Stanley—”

“You’re a bully, George.” Stanley looked as if he was about to cry when he said those words. ‘“You’re just as much of a bully as you claim God is, but God never tried to make me think he liked me.”

“I do like you!” George protested, “I said so!”

“But you didn’t mean it! Even now, when you just said it, you didn’t mean it. It’s just a thing you toss off when you’re trying to coax someone round to your side. You can’t be sincere, George, not even with yourself.”

And just like that, the broken clock of Stanley struck exactly the right time once more.

George shook his head to clear it. “Look, I may be the father of all lies, but even I know I'm not worth killing yourself over. There’s got to be more to it than that.”

Stanley snorted miserably. “That’s just it George, it’s _you_. You’re the closest thing I've got to a friend in this world, and you continuously try to take advantage of me. I’ve got nothing else! I’ve got no one else!” His throat started choking up. “Should’ve just let the truck hit me. Or would that have been a point for the other side?”

It was, but George would never admit that. Instead he locked arms with Stanley. 

“Stanley,” he said in his silkiest voice, “I've been avoiding you, I'll admit. I thought you’d be better off without my interference. I’m sorry.”

Though he looked like he didn’t want to believe a single word George said, Stanley appeared mollified. “Well you could have said, is all.”

“What, and have Him listening in? I’ve already had enough of Him mucking about with you.” once more, George flung his cape over Stanley’s shoulders. “Alright, we won’t go over to mine. Let’s go to your place. We can just talk.”

Stanley sniffed liquidly. “All right. Fine.” to George’s shock, he pressed a little into his side. “But no drinking, alright? I’ve got work in the morning.”

They lay on Stanley’s carpet at around two-thirty in the morning, completely sozzled. Stanley’s kitchen had mysteriously gained a liquor cabinet with bottles of fairly good quality liquor (“and we can’t waste them, Stanley, I haven’t manifested anything like this for over a month!”) which they took turns draining until verticality was a mere memory.

“Lovely lady of the ro-ses,” Stanley croaked in a sodden voice, “will you be mine to-night. Will you take off all your clothes-ses, aaaaaaaaand concentrateonholdingme tiiiiiiight….”

George clapped rhythm with his hands. Well _a_ rhythm. He made a noise in any case.

Stanley accidentally knocked over an empty bottle and giggled. “Well that’s it, then. I’m for it.” He tried to sit up several times before he actually managed the action.

George got up even slower, for he had even farther to go and feared the atmospheric changes would give him the bends.

“Mind if I kip here?” he asked.

Stanley furrowed his brow. “‘Ere, there’s only my bed, and its not that big.”

“I’ll take it anyway. I’m in no fit state to instantly transmogrify. I’ll end up inside a post box, with my molecules all scattered.”

Stanley gave him an unsteady look. “All right, fine.” he lumbered over to the bureau and took out the bottom drawer. “I’ll sleep here.”

“Oh come on, Stanley, you’re not _that_ small.” George blinked, trying to resettle his eyeballs with his fingertips. He managed to get over to the bed and tug the covers down. “Come on. It'll be fine.”

He turned to find Stanley giving him a quite piercing look. “What?”

“You trying any funny stuff with me?”

George tittered so hard he slid to the floor. “I’m not about to bum you, if that’s what you’re worried about. Here—” he slid off his shoes and got into bed, laying out flat as he could. He thumped the hollow just below his breastbone. “Lay you down there. No funny business. Not even a chortle.”

Stanley tottered for a moment, then shut the drawer with a shove of his foot. “Alright, but if I find gum in my hair or anything like that—”

George groaned. “Stanely, just get on with it, will you?”

Stanley got his shoes off and managed to navigate his way to the bed. Shyly, gingerly, he eased himself in so that his head lay on George’s chest, draping his body over the other man’s.

George patted his hair. “There. Not so bad, is it?”

“No,” Stanley said, already drowsy, “but now I've got another problem.”

“What is it? Forgot to brush your teeth?”

“No.” Stanley’s voice was barely a murmur. “This’ll hurt later. When you start treating me poorly again because you think other people are watching.”

George blinked. Stanley’s right o’clock again, already? “I promise, I'll treat you the same tomorrow. Can’t have you chucking yourself off bridges, can i?”

Stanley said something that was barely louder than a breath, and already he was out like a light. George spent the rest of his waking minutes trying to tease apart the phrase until he, too, succumbed. It sounded very much like “of you” but he didn’t get much farther than that. And when Stanley woke the next morning (hung over and pained) he couldn’t remember what he’d said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's kind of staggering watching _Derek and Clive Get The Horn_ and seeing just how much of a bully Peter Cook was at times. At one point he's literally spitting chewed-up crisps into Dudley Moore's hair and laughing about it. It's really bizarre how blatant he is about it right in front of the cameras. By all accounts he was at a really low ebb of his life at that point and he took it out on the people who loved him the most. His first wife AND his comedic partner were leaving and so he lashed out, which is a very George Spiggott thing to do, I think.


	8. Vacation from Reality

Two weeks on, George had been very good about treating Stanley courteous in public, not using sarcasm and the like. Stanley was guarded but cautious. After a visit to a public pool (and an incident involving a Bounty bar and the complete evacuation of said pool) George couldn’t help but notice how down he still was.

“—you need to relax, Stanley. Get away for a day or two.”

“Yeah, like I can afford a holiday right now,” Stanley said glumly, “the closest I came was taking a thermos of tea down to the park. It’s alright, it’s just been tight for a while.”

George sped up until he was in front of Stanley, walking backwards while matching his steps. “Stanley, we both know I can do something about this.”

Stanley’s face shuttered and he immediately turned away and started walking. “I knew it, I  _ knew  _ it. Back to this again are we?”

George was genuinely puzzled. “Back to what again? Stanely—” he skipped a bit to keep up. Stanley’s thin little pins could keep distance when they wanted to.

“This whole time has been a build-up to bargaining my soul away again, hasn’t it? God, I'm thick, should’ve realized it ages ago.”

George was thrown for a loop and laughed. Stanley stopped abruptly and swung around, face like thunder.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

George could help smiling at him. “Stanley, you’ve got it all wrong. This is just something nice I wanted to do for you.”

“In exchange for what?”

“In exchange for…” George searched the sky for an answer. “Making you feel better, I suppose.”

“Don’t buy it. Goodbye, George.” Stanley set off in another direction. George had to drag his arm to get him to stop. 

“Alright, alright, in exchange for…” George pointed. “That pin.”

Stanley’s hand flew to his lapel, covering an enamel pin that bore a specimen of _ Biston betularia f. typica _ . “What, my pin? I love this pin.”

“Well, since you don’t believe I would do it for nothing, then…”

Stanley’s face shuttered again and he whipped the pin from his lapel. “Fine. prick yourself, I don’t care.”

George handled it with care, tucking it into his cape collar. “There we are. Now, how about a holiday somewhere warm?”

“Yeah, and you’ll give me malaria, won’t you?”

“No malaria, no Montezuma’s revenge. Just white sandy beaches and sunshine and fruity drinks with little umbrellas. How about it, Stanley?”

Stanley looked up at him warily. “You’re not going to inject yourself as some kind of guerilla leader there to take over the resort?”

George held up two fingers. “On my honor, Stanley. It’ll be a nice quiet time.”

Stanley, at long last, seemed to relent. “Alright, but if I get even a whiff of brimstone—”

“Blow your raspberry.” George smiled. “You’re going to have a lovely time, Stanley. Magic words: Eleanor Bron!” he snapped.

_ The two young men arrived separately, checking into a hotel within a few hours of each other.The shorter man was some kind of composer, while the taller was always flirtatiously vague about his line of work. They met publicly by the hotel’s pool where they declined to swim but sunned side-by-side on chaise longue chairs and spoke in hushed english. They kissed when they thought no one was looking. After about two weeks they checked out of the hotel, making all the motions of returning home for work. Instead they moved into a rental house on the coast. They swam on the private beach, visited the farmer’s market (only the taller man spoke the local dialect and he did so with aplomb) and went nearly everywhere holding hands. After a while they became simply another installation of ex-pats, two amigos who simply never let the other out of sight. There were murmurs, of course, this was a God-fearing country, but social restraint stopped anyone from confronting the pair directly. They kept quite peacefully to themselves, anyway. If one was walking on the beach at night, one could glance up to their lighted house to find the shorter man working on the piano while his companion lay draped across it, drink in hand, seeming to listen with his whole body.  _

_ Tragedy struck one day, as a delivery truck veered from the road and grazed the shorter man as he walked hand-in-hand with his companion. Rushed to the hospital, his prognosis was bleak.  _

_ Tubes coming from his nose and major arteries, the stricken man turned to his companion with a loving yet serene look of finality— _

_ And blew a raspberry. _

They were right back on the sidewalk where they had been, flushed and breathing shakily.

Stanley eyed George. “What the hell was that?”

George blinked a few times. “I wasnt—I didn’t mean—”

“I asked for Mallorca, you gave me  _ Maurice _ .”

“That—wasn’t—supposed—to be like that,” George blurted out.

Stanley looked at him, a very shrewd and calculating look. “What’s your game? You trying to seduce me, get my soul that way?”

George whipped off his glasses, squinching his eyes shut and rubbing his temples. “Stanley, shut up for a bit. I’m—” he shook his head. “I don’t know what happened there, but I didn’t intend for it to be that way.”

Stanley looked uneasy. “What’s that mean, then? You saying I'm the one who poofed out on you?”

“That felt like a 50/50 split, if we’re keeping score.”

“Oh yeah?” Stanley laughed sharply. “Well if it’s all the same to you, George, I'll be going now.”

George wanted to chase after him, catch his arm, trip him, do anything in his power to just  _ stop Stanley leaving _ but at the same time knew that he absolutely could not. He watched Stanley go again, the way he deliberately stiffened his neck to keep from glancing back at George, the way he sought out George’s reflection in windows and nearby car mirrors with those intense, dark little eyes of his, George watched him press into the throng of people that took up the sidewalk—

And realized he’d had a two o’clock he’d forgotten about completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In preparation for this fic, I watched the movie _Not Only But Always_ and uh...don't, is my recommendation. Sexiest weirdo on two legs Rhys Ifans plays sexiest weirdo on two legs Peter Cook and Aiden McArdle does well with the limited material they give him, but it misrepresents a whole lot of facts in the service of a fairly cliche story. If that had been my first exposure to the duo, I would have thought that Cook and Moore were famous for having bitchy fights in public and no affection whatsoever between them, or that after the split Peter Cook just languished alone with no friends or family. If you're interested in learning more about their partnership, look elsewhere.


	9. Out of the friendzone and into the fire

“...all standard contract language,” George droned on, propping his chin on his wrist. He was so bored he could barely get the words out. “Just sign there, and you’ll have your wish granted.”

His target was a middle-aged banker with an upsettingly thin pencil moustache that was darker than his toupee. He sized the contract up.

“And if I give you my soul, I can have everything?”

“Sure,” George sighed.

“Fiduciary despondency? An 8% tax hike over the next fifteen quarters?”

“Yes, just—’ George scrubbed his eyes. “Don’t you want anything a bit more interesting? A night with Cleopatra? A house made of gold?”

The man looked shocked. “Well, it may not look like much to you, young bounder, but I lay at night dreaming of the market share.”

George laughed with no humor whatsoever. “Breathtaking. Look, just sign and we can get on with this business.”

The old man gave him an appraising look. “I have to ask, how did you get into the soul business? Nepotism? I bet your father plucked you right out of school.”

“Told you before, mate, I'm the ruddy devil. Now just sign or I'll give you the worst case of boils you’ve ever seen.”

His mark sneered. “I very much doubt that. No self-respecting demon would go prancing around in that circus outfit.”

George sighed mightily. He leaned forward and whispered at length in the banker’s ear. He turned white.

“And with Mrs. Miggins’ cat, of all things,” George said in mock horror. “You should be right ashamed of yourself.”

The banker looked down at the contract. “I...don’t know if I want to sign this anymore.”

George’s last bit of patience snapped. “Soddit. I’ve had enough of this puny sin, you avaricious old git. Call me when you’re ready to do something fun.”

He stalked off as the contract paper burst into flames, startling the old man. He walked until he was back on a trendier street with outdoor boutiques. He browsed until he found some real eyesores, all paisley and bright, contrasting colors. He dreaded the day the cape fell out of fashion, it was such a hassle to get one tailored to his long, thin frame.

“George? Cor, that is you?”

His ears recognized her long before he turned, dreading, to face Margaret Spencer. She was in a breezy number, dress crocheted out of neon-orange yarn over chartreuse petal pushers, her eyelids caked with eel-green shadow. She was breathtakingly garish. 

George nodded to her politely. “Good day, madam.” He hoped the over-formality would turn her away.

Instead Margaret smiled. “Good to see you’re back around. You know, Stanley’s been moping about the place while you’ve gone. Can’t get two words out of the man.”

“So no more dates, then?” George asked acerbically before he could stop himself.

Margaret smiled, browsing past a bikini knit from white string and a granny-square vest. “No. he always says he’s a bit busy. Too bad. We had fun that day, didn’t we?”

“Ah yes, Mr. Moon can be quite the closed book when he wants to be.”

“Not around you, I'll bet. Get him on the subject, he never shuts up.”

George perked up. “Really?”

“Yeah, only way to get him talking about anything these days, even his moths.” Margaret blinked at him, lids slowed by the weight of caked makeup. “You heard anything about his luna moth? I do worry he wasn’t able to use the glue I gave him, and he’s too embarrassed to say.”

George gave a reptilian smile. “Tell you what: the next time I run into him I'll ask after it.”

“He’s so shy. It’s cute.”

George gritted his teeth behind his grin. _You’d know, wouldn’t you?_

“Do come and visit him more often, would you? He’s much happier after a chat with you.”

George lowered his glasses so he could look at her over the rims. “Begging your pardon, but could I ask why you’re so invested in his mood?”

Margaret gave him an odd look. “Well… we’re friends, aren’t we? I like seeing him happy.”

To her confusion, this sent George doubling over in a fit of giggles.

“Oh yes, Stanley Moon and Margaret Spencer, friends,” he choked out, “my, I can’t wait to deliver the news. Excuse me.”

He walked off a discreet distance and then, with a snap, transmitted himself to the club. He couldn’t wait for Stanley to pop by (and he would, couldn’t keep George’s name out of his mouth for long, what a shrieker!) so he could dangle this juicy tidbit over his head. Margaret had called him a friend, how deliciously disappointing.

Envy was laid out on his bed when he made it up to his room.

“Piss off, En, I haven’t got it in me today.” George went straight over to his dressing table.

“Oh dear, is your little toyboy coming over? I really must make myself scarce then.” Envy took a sip of his gimlet. 

“Go insinuate somewhere else, I'm busy.” George composed an outfit that would read “pitying, but celebratory.”

“You really are in a mood, aren’t you, ducks? Let me guess, he’s finally let you hold his hand in broad daylight. Or...ah, I see. You’re about to deliver some bad news that will send him running into your arms?”

George stopped rummaging for a moment and met Envy’s gaze in the mirror. “You are the worst sin, you know that? Absolutely wretched.”

Envy toasted him.

“Mind you, I doubt it’s going to go anywhere. You haven’t been able to keep a relationship since...oh, when was it—”

George put out a warning finger. “Don’t say it. Just shove off.”

Envy put a hand to his chest. “No need to snap at me, my dear, just laying out the plain truth. Here you have a lovely little lapdog and you jerk him about on a leash. Meanwhile I can’t even get Vanity to look me in the eye during.”

George rolled his eyes. “Yes, and we all have to hear about it, don’t we? Look, I want this to be free of interruptions. Make yourself scarce. Monopolize the lav. I do not give a flying blue damn about it. Just don’t be here.”

Envy gave a martyr’s sigh. “Unwanted, as always. I’ll go mourn my youth elsewhere, as you command.” He slid slowly off the bed, only moving faster than a snail’s pace when George winged him with a balled-up sock.

George fumbled for a tie, when someone knocked on the door a minute later. He threw a shoe at it. 

“I told you to clear off!”

“Oh, erm, guess I'll come back later, then?” Stanley Moon’s subdued tone came through the door.

George was across the room in two strides. “Nevermind, Stanley, I thought you were Envy again. Come in, sit yourself down.”

Stanley stood awkwardly at the threshold, looking like he didn’t quite know where to look. “What’s this mess?”

George looked down at the clothing scattered on the floor. “Oh, uh, looking for a sock. You know how it is.”

Stanley looked nervous. “Oh yes. Erm. haha. I was thin—” his voice spiked an octave. “...I was thinking. About. You know.”

George nodded impatiently. He needed Stanley to blunder into a proper setup so he could say “ _yes, Stanley, I don't think Margaret Spencer will be bedding down with you anytime soon but maybe she’ll let you braid her hair_ ” with equal parts contempt and pity.

Stanley stammered out, “it’s just that...I like you.”

George nodded encouragingly, thinking it preamble to something.

“I like you George.”

He nodded, prompting with a gesture.

“I like you.” Stanley fidgeted. “I like you a lot. More than I've liked just about anyone.”

“But?”

Stanley gave him a look. “But what?”

“You like me, but…” George gave him a gesture. “But _something_. I like you but you’re evil. I like you but I like Margaret Spencer more. I like you but I've decided to become a monk. Well?”

“There’s no _but_ involved, George. I’m trying to say I like you.”

George gave him a very puzzled look.

“In fact I like you more than…”Stanley trailed off, those dark little eyes searching for words. “...well, a lot. I like you more than I thought was possible. I like you in spite of myself, and in spite of you sometimes.”

George squinted. “That’s...lovely. So what else are you trying to tell me?”

Stanley gave an agitated grunt. “That’s just it, George, there’s nothing else.” he walked closer. “I like you, I…” he shyly reached out and touched George’s arm. “...like you.”

George looked down into his adoring little face, completely bewildered.

“Margaret,” he croaked, the previous afternoon’s intentions invading.

Stanley looked down for a bit. “She’s a lovely girl, but… I can’t talk to her, like I said. It’s important, being able to talk about things.”

“You could learn.” Was he actually trying to talk Stanley out of this? “You can connect with other people, there’s literally nothing stopping you—”

“That’s just it, there is. None of them are you.” Stanley blushed. “Not to give you a big head, but you’re the most interesting person I know. I could talk for hours about things with you. I couldn’t even do that with my cousin Dud, he’s the only one who likes moths as much as I do.”

Something snapped into sharp focus all the sudden, leaving George a bit woozy. He put his hands on his head and moaned. Stanley looked up in concern.

“What is it, George? You all right?”

George sucked in a sudden breath. “Say more. Tell me how clever I am.”

Stanley seemed put off a bit. “Well, you’re dead clever. Even though I know you’re making fun of me most of the time, I still enjoy—”

He pinwheeled his hands out, cut off mid-sentence by George’s fierce capture of his lips. George picked him up a little, disengaging his mouth long enough to growl in his ear.

“Tell me I'm pretty and sweet. Praise me. Worship me, Stanley Moon.”

Stanley’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”

George flung him onto the bed. “That’s it, beg for a pardon. Grovel a bit, if you could. Keep a look of adoring piety at all times, it makes me hotter than that level of hell I reserve for barristers.”

Stanley flushed a bit. “Y-you want me to...worship you?”

“Stanleyyyyy,” George let a bit of a whinge creep into his voice, “I'll reciprocate, you know I will. I just want to feel loved a bit, that’s all.” he undid Stanley’s belt, revealing his y-fronts.

Stanley stifled a gasp. “Well, needs must I suppose. You’re absolutely gorgeous—oh Christ.” he saw George’s look and corrected himself. “Fuckin’ hell, George, you’re absolutely masterful at the soul game and—” he yelped, “—whatever the hell that thing is you’re doing with your tongue, it’s fucking magic, oh hell, oh damn, oh fucking—” he slapped the headboard.

George made sure to keep Stanley praying in all sorts of positions, most considered extremely blasphemous by the church. It was most decidedly not afternoon by the time they finished, and by then it seemed only prudent that Stanley spend the night.

George lay dozing fitfully with Stanley’s head once more ensconced on his chest. He wasn’t really awake, but he wasn’t fully asleep either. His gaze sort of drifted around the room—

Where he saw a figure picked out in Moonlight.

“Strewth!” George snapped to attention. 

God had manifested himself as a series of semisolid shapes picked out by the thin light streaming through the window, so rather like a Michael Redgrave made of Moonlight. He seemed politely disinterested.

“Hullo, dear,” he said, “how are you getting on?”

George chuckled through his nose. “You tell me. You’ve got the view.”

God sighed, shifting in his seat. “I do wish you would stop trying to deceive me, lucy. And yourself. Can you admit, now, that you have grown attached to this soul?”

The hairs on George’s neck stood at attention. “So what? What’s it got to do with you?”

“Time was, you would have given up trying for this soul long before now. All your time down here has changed you, you must admit.” God licked his unreal lips. “I must admit I've changed as well. Perhaps concentrating on the mass, not the individual, has been my undoing. After all, you’ve found far more success at it than I have.”

George tightened his grip protectively on Stanley’s head. “So what, you want to swap gardening tips?”

“I knew this would be hard for you to hear coming from me. Take your young man there—”

“Take him?” George laughed sharply. “Oh, do try. I’ll give them the bomb, Yaweh, I will. I hope you can teach cockroaches to sing hosannas, because they’re all that will be left when I'm done. I’ll rent the bloody earth so that nothing ever grows again, if you go after him.”

God looked at him a little sadly. “Yes, I can see you’re not ready to hear it from me. Well, I'll try another tact, and if that doesn’t work, another. I’ll never stop trying, lucy dear.”

“Good,” George snapped, “go ahead, I'm done bowing and scraping. I’ll never—”

But it was useless to continue, because the air was empty once more, George was speaking angrily to nothing and Stanley was stirring in his sleep, emitting little puppy-whimpers. George settled him in again, kissed his sweaty little brow, and pet his hair until he settled.


	10. Chapter 10

“Been meaning to ask something,” Stanley said.

It was morning, it had been morning for a long time now, but they lounged in bed with no intent of getting up anytime soon.

“Ask away.”

“Why’ve you got a mirror on the ceiling of your bed?”

“Why would any enterprising young devil have a mirror above their bed Stanley?” George assumed a look of innocence. “For...late night reflection, as it were.”

Stanley swatted him with a pillow. 

George laid back with a chuckle. Stanley fit very nicely in the gap between his body and his left arm and he was pondering ways to make this a permanent arrangement (preferably one that didn’t involve surgery.)

Stanley sighed. “I’ve got to get up. I’ve got work.”

Neither moved a muscle.

“I was thinking.” George watched in the mirror as he kissed the side of Stanley’s head. “You should call it in. Say it’s a sacred holiday.”

“What, like Satan’s eve?” Stanley sobered up. “Can’t. Rent’s due and I can’t afford to miss a shift.”

“I could do something about that.”

“George, I don’t want you tempting my landlord.”

“I meant a nice fruit basket, but if you insist…”

Stanley laughed, finally twisting his way out of George’s grasp. He scooted to the edge of the bed, untangling his clothes from the mess on the floor. He seemed to be thinking.

“Was a good night, wasn’t it, George?” he said softly.

George stretched, catlike, showing off muscles.

“Diabolically fantastic,” he pronounced.

Stanley held a little smile on his face as he dressed, hunting down his socks (one had snagged on the canopy, somehow) tying his shoes in double knots, patting himself down to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He stopped at the door, looking back to where George still sprawled on the bed.

“Bye George,” he said shyly.

George shot him a short wave, smiling in his most dashing fashion. He savored the little moments left in bed before he really did have to get up and find the lav (and throw Envy out, as it were.) Then he took the morning, visiting in at the bar, tallying up receipts, taking it slow. He was anticipating the end of Stanley’s shift, where he would inevitably come running back to the bar.

He did not see Stanley again for two whole weeks.

Two weeks of worry. Two weeks of fury. Two weeks of loitering outside Wimpy’s and pretending he wasn’t, two weeks of stalking the streets and finding no sign of the short-order cook, two weeks before his temper ran out and he practically kicked Stanley’s door in.

Stanley, sat at the card table with a new specimen and a paper of pins, froze.

“Well, howdy-fucking-do! What time do you call this, then?” George stared at him, fuming.

“Er, hullo George—”

“ _ Hullo George, _ ” he parroted back in an elfin voice, “what on earth do you think this is?”

“Um,  _ Axiopoena karelini _ ?”

“Not the bloody moth. Where have you been?”

Stanley wet his lips. “You know...around.”

“Around? I’ve not seen you for a fortnight, you call that  _ around _ ?”

“Well, you’re not as stealthy as you like to think you are,” Stanley said, an edge creeping into his voice, “it’s really quite easy to spot you when you’re snooping about.”

“You’ve—” George stopped and rubbed the bridge of his nose. When he spoke again, his voice was dangerously smooth. “Have you been avoiding me, Stanley Moon?”

“Too right.” Stanley dropped his moth from trembling fingertips, now he flicked a hand at the door. “You know the way out.”

George took a sharp breath. “Maybe I've missed something. Last time we seem to have parted on good terms—”

“—and let’s keep it that way,” Stanley said desperately. He shoved the rest of his equipment in a box, pricking himself on the pins. “How about that? We had a nice time, you didn’t try to trick me once, let’s leave it at that.”

George shook his head. “I’m sorry, what? Why would i? Why would  _ you  _ for that matter?”

“Because you’re a bully, George. You only like me right now because I gave in. one day when you get bored—”

George gave a startled laugh. Stanley glared. 

“You, Stanley Moon? Boring? You’re about the least boring person I've ever encountered.”

“That’s a lie.”

“If that were a lie, why the hell would I see fit to spending so much time in your presence?”

“Because you’re making fun of me. I make you feel cleverer when I talk, so you walk me around like one of those yippy little teacup dogs.”

George had to bite the insides of his cheek to keep from laughing at the visual. “You do make me feel cleverer, Stanley, but the bit of me making fun of you is just off. And if take you on occasional walkies—” _ must not laugh, he’s staring right at me, _ “—it’s because I like being out and about with you.”

“You’ll get bored of me, people like you always do—”

“But I'm not a person like me, am i?” George craned his head so they locked eyes. Stanley looked away. George moved his head, always going where he retreated. “I’m me, and I'm telling you I don’t think I could ever get bored of you.”

“Well then...this is some sort of elaborate revenge, isn’t it? You’ll sleep with me, get me attached to you, and then vanish. As punishment for God not letting you into heaven.”

George blinked. He genuinely, honestly had never considered that angle. “And the purpose of that would be? Stanley, if I wanted you to suffer, there are much less laborious ways to go about it.”

Stanley was grasping for reasons, he couldn’t look George in the eye as he sputtered, “well, ah, I was terrible in bed, wasn’t i? That’s what you’re here to say. Was my very first time doing—well, anything!”

George sighed. “Stanley dear, virginity is a social construct. In any case, sex only gets better with practice, something I highly recommend in substitution for the remainder of this argument.”

Stanley looked up. The vulnerability in his eyes jolted George, and he had to restrain himself from grabbing Stanley right then and there, despite how angry he still was.

“Well, it’s going to go wrong, isn’t it?” he said softly, “nothing ever goes right for either of us.”

“That’s defeatist talk, Mr. Moon. I won’t stand for it. As your friend and lover, I will not. I’ve nursed you through seven wishes, I like you—” he halted, rolling the taste of the words around in his mouth, realizing they were the truth, “i like you, Stanley, I do. More than just about anyone. And if you vanish on me, I will move heaven and earth to find you again, because I won’t be abandoned a second time.”

Stanley flushed. “Cor, I'd forgotten about that. I didn’t mean to turn you out like God did, George, honestly I didn’t.”

“Well, I suppose I can forgive you,” George said a long-suffering tone, “in time. Which we'll be spending together.”

“What, like now?”

“Splendid suggestion! Let’s step out.” George proffered his arm. Stanley looked him up and down, hesitating, before slipping his arm through George’s.

“You really won’t chuck me,” he said softly, “not even if...you-know-who calls you back?”

“I’ll tell him to get stuffed.” George pressed a kiss to the top of his head, an easy feat with their height difference. “On my honor.”

“You have no honor.”

“On my shoes then. They’re quite expensive.”

They hit the street and wandered aimlessly, for neither of them had thought to lay out a destination.

“I’ve got a smashing idea.” George nodded at a cart stopped at the opposite street corner. “I’ll pop off, buy us two Frobisher and Gleason ice lollies. Be a nice round karmic circle for us.”

Stanley smiled like he didn’t trust him to come back. “Alright George.”

“Won’t be a minute. Wait right here!” George jogged across the street, completely unmindful of traffic, to the cart. “Two Frobisher and Gleason ice lollies, my man. Raspberry, if you would be so kind.”

The seller hocked and spat something unidentifiable to the side, and retrieved two (thankfully wrapped) ice lollies from the cart. George paid him in exact change for once and turned, one in each hand, smiling—

To see Stanley sat on a bench next to a pleasantly ruffled, Redgravian-looking fellow, smiling and laughing.

George’s blood went cold, quite a painful prospect for him. He thought of many dramatic ways to interrupt their time, not the least of which ran to chucking the ice lollies across the street and hitting them both dead-center in the forehead, but that would be uncouth. Instead he stood, quite prim in his fury, until God wrapped up whatever laborious monologue he was pontificating, and stood. He shook Stanley’s hand, the tosser. George was only the most rudimentary of lip-readers, but even he could see that Stanley said, “thanks, sir. Goodbye.”

He counted one-leaping-nun, two-leaping-nuns, until he got to twenty and then he crossed. His fury had crystallized into ice rivaling that of the ninth circle.

“What do you call that then?” he said with ferocious calm.

Stanley looked happily dazed, like he’d just had a minor but pleasing orgasm. “Hmm? Oh, finally met that God bloke. Nice chap, I can see why you miss him.”

“ _ Supah _ ,” George said in a posh snarl, “what. Did. He. Say. Stanley?”

“Mmm?” Stanley seemed to be settling back down to earth. “Oh we just...talked. About a lot. Felt like I could have told him anything. And at the end…”

“Yes?”

“He asked me to take care of you.”

George squinted. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means.” Stanley looked coy as he snagged his treat from George’s hand. He unwrapped it and started licking, which derailed George’s train of thought for a moment.

“How delightfully condescending. Does he intend for you to turn me away from the path of evil?”

“What, you don’t think I could do it?” Stanley teased. He looped their arms together, leading him off. George couldn't decide whether to be annoyed or aroused. “I could work on you a bit each day, get you to quit sinning.”

“What, you? Stanley Moon?”

“No, Keith Moon, the drummer,” Stanley quipped. He really  _ was  _ developing a wit. George’s corrupting influence. Perhaps they’d go in the opposite direction, with George dragging him down once more, a concept he aired over their stroll through the park.

Stanley gave his lolly a cursory lick. “Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we? Anyway, I won’t give up easily if you intend on pulling in that direction.”

George chuckled to himself. “So you’re planning to spend the remainder of your earthly years arguing with me?”

“Round these parts it’s called marriage.”

“What happens when we run out of things to argue about?” George couldn’t help but pry.

“We’ll have to see, won’t we?” Stanley sucked halfway down his ice, and George quite forgot what he was about to say next. And so they passed that afternoon as they would pass many successive afternoons, with meandering debates that culminated with sex at George’s place.

Some sixty-odd years later:

“...and the thing about Jesus is that he was a terrible carpenter. Absolutely dreadful. You see, he’d never completed his apprenticeship.”

“I would think sermonizing would take the bigger priority, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, a little bit of mitering never got anyone crucified, that’s all I'm saying.”

The two men strolled, arguing, through what looked like an impossibly perfect field to where an old man worked on some cucumber frames.

“It doesn’t stop at him, either. John the baptist? Fully ordained in animal husbandry.”

“I never!”

“Give him a field of sheep, he’d have them husbanded in no time.” George stopped short. “Oi. St. Peter?”

The old man straightened with aching dignity. “I am he, sir.”

“Right,” George said. His face, before shuttering completely, spoke of loss. “Yes. Right. Well. This is where I leave you, then.”

Stanley grabbed on his arm to keep him from leaving. “Not a chance, I'm asking him.”

“Don’t. It lacks dignity”

“Who cares?” Stanley addressed the old man. “Ere, I was wondering if my friend could come in with me. I’ve looked after him for a long time, kept him from mischief.”

“Leave it, Stanley.” George looked uncomfortable. “Told you I wasn’t going to beg.”

“You’re not begging, I am!”

“Comes to the same thing.”

St. Peter waited patiently for their bickering to subside. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what the problem is, gentlemen.”

“Can he come in with me?”

“Where?”

“You know, into heaven?”

St. Peter blinked. “I am still somewhat confused.”

“He’s speaking plain English, you barmy—” George cut off when Stanley squeezed his arm. St. Peter gave him a look familiar to anyone who has worked a single day of retail.

“Gentlemen, you have been in heaven for the last twenty minutes.”

Both men blinked in shock.

“Then he’s...he’s let me in then?” George asked softly, “I'm allowed in?”

St. Peter gave a long, dignified blink. “I don’t understand. You are George Spiggott?”

George stumbled. “Oh, erm, yes.”

“George Spiggott of Southam street?”

“Ye-es?”

St. Peter let the silence linger for a long, cruel moment. Then: “well, there you are. Welcome, gentlemen.”

He stalked off, bearing a bit of wood lattice, leaving Stanley and George standing there.

“Well...I suppose that’s it then.”

“We’re in heaven.”

“Yes, Stanley, it doesn’t look like Croydon.”

“It might do. Heaven is a big place.”

“Even so, I doubt very much anyone’s idea of an afterlife would resemble Croydon.”

“You don’t know that. My cousin Bernard, he worked on the railway—”

The two men walked together, bickering on for a comfortable eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Now's the time to say goodbye  
>  Now's the time to yield a sigh  
> Now's the time to wend away  
> Until we meet again some sunny day_

**Author's Note:**

> Boy howdy, how's everyone doing in the plague times. Sure is a time, isn't it? I'm just...peachy.   
> Now, under normal circumstances I usually publish stories serially, usually a chapter every week, but in a year where it seems like everyone's on borrowed time, i decided to write this thing through to the very end and publish it all at once. There you go. For your perusing pleasure.


End file.
